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THE ARK OF 1803 



THE 

Ark of 1803 


A STORY OF LOUISI- 
ANA PURCHASE TIMES 

ft7> ^ 

B y C'^fAfs T E P H E N S 



H. BURGES.S>. 


New York 

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 
1904 






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Copyright, 1904 
BY 

A. S. BARNES ^ CO. 

May^ I go 4 


LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAY 12 1904 

Oepyrlffht Entry 

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CLASS Oi XXo. Na 

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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

THE master’s holiday ----- j 

CHAPTER II. 

THE ARK IS LAUNCHED - - - - 26 

CHAPTER III. 

JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK - - - ''51 

CHAPTER IV. 

JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER - - - - 68 

CHAPTER V. 

UNCLE AMASa’s NEWS - - - - - 84 

CHAPTER VI. 

A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER” - - - - I06 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE CAVE ROBBERS - - - - - 1 29 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE TORNADO - - - - - “154 


V 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 

THE LANDSLIDE - - - “ "* -l8l 

CHAPTER X. 

‘‘SAM HOKOMOKE” _ _ - - - 202 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE HEAD ------- 227 

CHAPTER XII. 

NEW ORLEANS ------ 260 

CHAPTER XIII. 

“VIVE napoleon” - - - - - -301 

CHAPTER XIV. 

CONCLUSION - - - - • - ‘*320 


VI 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ HEY, WHAT ? FORGIVE THEM ! ” - 
“ YOU WILL SURELY COME BACK THEN ? ” - 

“ here’s your turkey gobbler ! ” 

A “ KEEL ” FROM ST. LOUIS CAME ALONGSIDE 
‘‘ GUESS WHO HE IS ! GUESS ! ” 

“ HOW GOT YE BY THE FORT ? ” 

IN ITS PLACE ROSE THE STARS AND STRIPES 
‘‘ NAPOLEON IS HERE ! VIVE NAPOLEON ! ” 

“ THEY ARE GOING TO CALL AT OUR LANDING ! ” 


PAGE 


22 




91 ^ 

128 ^ 
170 
202 
268 


293 

319 

334 " 


THE ARK OF 1803 

CHAPTER I 

THE master’s holiday 


’E’S taking holidays 
enough. I guess he 
can give us one,” 
said Moses Ayer, 
signing his name 
laboriously uphill. 

‘‘ One licking more 
likely,” said Lewis Hoyt. 
He grinned as he took 
the big smooth-faced 
chip from Moses and 
added his signature. 
Here, Molly, it’s your turn. Remem- 
ber, you want to leave room for all the 
others that can possibly squeeze on.” 

If I couldn’t write smaller than that 



I 


THE ARK OF 1803 


I wouldn’t sign,” retorted Molly Royce 
over his shoulder. ‘‘He’s got to stand treat 
and that’s all there is to it.” 

While the three signers were busy at 
the master’s table, a little cloud of turkey 
feathers broke suddenly over a group of 
boys and girls who were gathered round the 
fireplace of the big schoolhouse. Jimmy 
Claiborne had thrown a handful of the 
feathers he was plucking at Louis Gist. 

Louis, who was busy with another tur- 
key, dropped it and sprang at Jimmy. 
Jimmy dodged among the others. The 
benches were overturned. In a moment a 
skirmish had broken out and the school was 
a mass of dodging figures, laughs and screams. 

“Stop that racket,” cried Moses Ayer, 
pounding on the master’s table. “ Listen 
here! — Jimmy Claiborne, you and Louis 
stop your fussing and come and sign this 
petition. Quit fooling. He may be bang- 
ing at the door any minute.” 


2 


THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 

Louis says Marion Royce don’t want 
me to go on the ark,” shouted Jimmy, 
“and I want to know if it’s true.” 

“ Come and sign,” yelled Moses. “The 
ark won’t be starting for a month and this 
petition goes into effect to-day. Quit your 
squabbling and come here.” 

“ I tell you you won't go to New Orleans 
on the ark,” screamed Louis Gist, swinging 
his turkey round his head as he charged 
with it. 

“Never mind New Orleans, I tell you,” 
cried Moses, reaching after Jimmy as Jimmy 
dodged the turkey swung at him. “ Look 
out what you’re doing!” He caught at 
the turkey to ward it off, tripped over a 
puncheon, and went over, dragging the 
turkey and its holder with him. 

Lewis Hoyt was still grinning. He 
caught the passing Jimmy by a fringe of his 
buckskin and drew him to the master’s desk. 

“ Sign here, if you’ve got sense enough,” 
3 


THE ARK OF 1803 


he said. ‘‘You look as if you’d been roll- 
ing in a torn feather bed. If I were Marion 
Royce I’d leave you two muddle- heads 
behind even if I had to fill your places with 
girls.” 

“I guess Marion would be mighty glad 
to fill one of their places with a girl,” gasped 
Moses Ayer, emerging from the little boys 
who had promptly fallen over him when he 
tripped. 

Everyone laughed and looked at Milly 
Ayer. She blushed and bent over her book. 
She was one of the older girls who had sat 
quietly in the back rows, paying no atten- 
tion to the younger ones about the fire. 

“ Don’t mind him, Milly, he’s only your 
brother,” said Louis Gist. Now that Jimmy 
Claiborne was captured he could return to 
finish plucking his turkey at the fireside. 
“Won’t we have a grand barbecue, if the 
old rascal doesn’t come ! ” 

“We’ll have it even if he does come,” 


4 


THE MASTER^S HOLIDAY 


insisted Moses Ayer. I guess an old toper 
that can stay away from his school four days 
at a time hasn’t much right to keep us from 
having a holiday. I guess he’s pretty lucky 
to be allowed to teach here at all.” 

Lewis Hoyt, who was patiently guiding 
Jimmy Claiborne’s hand through the evo- 
lution of his long name, looked up. 

‘^You can depend on it. Master Hemp- 
stead wouldn’t be here in Fish Creek teach- 
ing us if he wasn’t addicted to the bowl. 
He’s a scholar, and some day you’ll regret 
you didn’t appreciate what he’s tried to 
teach you.” 

Lewis is preaching again,” cried Moses. 
‘‘What’s Master Hempstead taught us ex- 
cept the way to the Marietta tavern?” 

“ Who needs to go to Marietta since the 
Claibornes bought their new still, — except 
to hide himself?” asked Louis Gist. 

There was a sudden silence over all the 
room. It was so quiet that Jimmy Clai- 
5 


THE ARK OF 1803 


borne’s labored writing was heard, and all the 
older scholars exchanged glances. The Clai- 
borne still had been a bitter subject at Fish 
Creek, and some of the older boys had said 
that it was already ruining Jimmy Claiborne. 

Lewis Hoyt held his hand closed over 
Jimmy’s as the silence fell, — a silence timed 
by the steady booming of the puncheon 
mauls at the little shipyard where the ark 
was building. 

Jimmy’s hand trembled and stopped. 
Lewis steadily drove it to the finishing of 
the name. 

“ I wish there wasn’t a still on the whole 
length of the Ohio river,” Lewis said very 
quietly. “Come here, Louis Gist, it’s your 
turn to sign.” 

Jimmy Claiborne went back to tne fire, 
sullen, red-faced and silent, and while the 
incident was soon dismissed by the others 
he sat looking into the fire or plucking 
savagely at the feathers of his turkey. He 
6 


THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 


and Louis had caught them that morning, just 
outside the schoolhouse, in their turkey trap. 

Over at the shipyard the treenail ham- 
mers sounded, blending their sharp raps 
with the measured hollow strokes of the 
mauls. All the men on the creek were 
working on the ark which young Captain 
Marion Royce was building to go down to 
New Orleans with the spring ‘‘fresh.” 

Jonas Sparks, the veteran shipwright, 
had come down from Marietta to oversee 
the work. Even Gaffir Hoyt was working 
there, and Uncle Amasa Claiborne, half of 
whose scalp the Indians had taken thirty 
years before. 

And Louis Gist had told Jimmy that 
Marion would not let him go. Jimmy 
knew why. They were gradually coming 
to distrust him. He and Kenton and 
McAfee were one party in the Fish Creek 
school ; Moses and Lewis and Louis Gist 
another 


7 


THE ARK OF 1803 


He wanted to go to New Orleans. He 
was entitled to. All winter long he had 
planned it. Marion Royce would not dare 
refuse. But Louis’ unconsidered speech 
rankled in his bitter heart. He would have 
been glad to escape into the woods, but he 
sat sullenly plucking his turkey for the 
barbecue, entrenched behind his knowledge 
that he had as much right in the school- 
house as any of the others who chattered 
around him. 

Free public schools had not yet been 
established in Ohio, but the pioneer families 
maintained a ‘^subscription school” for 
their children in primitive schoolhouses of 
logs afterwards widely known as “ Brush 
College.” Here masters of greater or less 
merit taught school six days in a week, with 
no holidays. Not a few, indeed, of the 
early schoolmasters of this new region were 
men whom certain weaknesses of character 
or appetite had exiled from the older walks 
8 


THE MASTER^S HOLIDAY 


of civilization. Except for such infirmities 
many of them were instructors of remark- 
able ability. 

Master Hempstead’s foible was the all too 
common one of a fond and apparently un- 
governable liking for beverages which ine- 
briate. On a number of occasions he had 
dismissed school in the middle of the fore- 
noon, and after touching homilies to his 
pupils, had walked out and not been 
seen again for several days. He had 
then reappeared, visibly the “worse for 
wear.” 

Marietta, then a vigorous young colony 
of farmers and shipwrights from New Eng- 
land, was the Mecca to which Master 
Hempstead’s erratic pilgrimages were di- 
rected; and it was from one of these, after 
an absence of four days, that he was return- 
ing, in no very pleasant humor, on the 
morning of our story. 

In the meantime his little kingdom had 
9 


THE ARK OF 1803 


run riot and tasted the sweets of self-govern- 
ment. An exuberant hilarity indeed was 
in the air during these first years of the 
century just past. Moreover, Ohio had 
become a state that month, and daring 
schemes for capturing New Orleans from 
the Spanish were on foot. 

On every day of Master Hempstead’s 
absence his pupils, numbering nineteen, of 
various ages, had assembled, in expectation 
of his reappearance. They played “gool,” 
“ I spy ” and hide-and-seek ” in the 
underbrush about the stumpy clearing. Of 
more interest still was a trap for wild tur- 
keys which the boys had constructed at a 
distance in the woods. 

This trap was a covered pen of stakes 
and brush, into which a ‘‘ tunnel ” led from 
the outside. This subway, as well as the 
pen, was baited with corn, and wild turkeys, 
which abounded in the forest, were thus 
allured to enter. The two turkeys which 

lO 


THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 


the boys were plucking this morning had 
been caught in this way. 

It was the custom at these early sub- 
scription schools of Ohio for the master 
to ‘‘stand a treat ” on New Year’s Day, and 
provide, at his own expense, a bushel of 
hickory nuts and ten pounds of candy. 
This coveted festival Master Hempstead 
had ignored, much to the dissatisfaction of 
his pupils; and now they determined to 
bring him to terms. 

To guard against a surprise they had 
closed the door and barricaded it with their 
benches, which consisted merely of rough 
“puncheons,” each having four wooden 
pins for legs; and Moses Ayer, Lewis Hoyt 
and Molly Royce had prepared a species of 
“ round robin,” containing the demands of 
the school, written laboriously on a large, 
smooth chip. 

Such was the state of affairs when, at 
about ten in the forenoon, the instructor 
n 


THE ARK OF 1803 


entered the clearing where the schoolhouse 
stood, and was promptly espied by more 
than one pair of sharp eyes at the one small, 
four-pane window. 

Beyond doubt the man was in bad 
plight. His indiscretions were heavy upon 
him ; a raging headache and many other 
aches oppressed him sorely; his coonskin 
cap was pulled low over watery eyes. He 
noted the smoke from the rock chimney 
and strode to the door. 

But the latch-string, that ancient token 
of hospitality, had disappeared within its 
hole, and the door itself was fast shut. He 
thundered at it with his fist, but obtained 
no response, unless an ambiguous and irri- 
tating snicker from within could be thus 
construed. 

“ Open the door ! It is I, the master ! 
Open this door ! ” he shouted. 

Still no response; but now the window 
was pushed slowly aside, and out through 


12 


THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 


the hole there came a long stick, to the end 
of which was tied a huge, fresh, white-wal- 
nut chip ; on the smoothed side of this the 
master at length noticed there was a black, 
coarse scrawl. 

‘‘What’s this?” exclaimed the irate 
pedagogue, starting backward as they 
dangled the chip under his nose. 

“ Read it, master ! ” yelled a chorus of 
wild voices from within the dark hole. 
“Read it, master! Ye can’t come in till 
ye do.” 

With a snarl of disdain Master Hemp- 
stead snatched at the chip. 

“ ‘ Read it ! ’ ” he muttered. “ That’s 
more than you could do yourselves, I warrant. 
What blockhead of ye wrote this ? What 
ignoramus of ye spelled it ? ” In truth the 
spelling was not above reproach. But those 
were pioneer days. The chip read as follows : 

We the undersined Scollars of Fish 
Creke want and are determined to have a 


13 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Hollerday. You didn’t give us one at 
New Yere’s. You can’t kepe school here 
again til you do. Ohio is a State. We 
want to cellarbrate it. We dimmand that 
you get a bushell of hickerry nuts, or wall- 
nuts ten ponds of Candy and five ponds of 
Raizeans. Say you will or you cant come 
in. Sine your name at the bottom of this 
with your led pensel to let us know you 
mene it and all will yit be wel. If you 
dont you cant never come in here again for 
you are a bad-drinking Old Fellar. 

Moses Ayer James Claiborne 

Lewis Hoyt Louis Gist 

Molly Royce And all the rest of us. 

This, as must be confessed, was hardly re- 
spectful or complimentary, but these were 
rough times and these children had much 
to learn. Master Hempstead was accustomed 
to the utmost consideration. The man of 
learning had then, as now, the highest 
place in the regard of the community, 
and his anger seethed, as, with the hastily 
adjusted aid of his horn-bowed glasses, he 
perused this gage of rebellion. 

14 


THE MASTER^S HOLIDAY 

‘‘Numskulls!” he shouted. “After 
all I have taught ye, to spell like that! 
Y- e - r - e, year ! R-a-i-z-e-a-n-s, raisins! 
T-i-1, till ! P-o-n-d-s, pounds ! S-i-n-e, 
sign! O you young ignoramuses! You 
will go out into the world and disgrace 
me ! ” 

“Sign your name, master ! ” shrilled the 
unfeeling chorus inside. 

“O you young vipers! Vipers whom I 
have cherished in my bosom ! Mox anguis 
recreatus! Sting the hand that nourished 
you ! And spell like that ! ” 

“ Sign it, master ! Y ou got to sign it 1 
H-i-l-l-e-1 H-e-m-p-s-t-e-a-d, Hillel Hemp- 
stead. Sign it!” still yelled the dissonant 
chorus within. 

“ Ingrates ! Thankless cubs ! Good in- 
struction has been wasted on ye ! Open the 
door, that I may flog it out of ye ! ” 

« No — no — no, master, you can’t come 
in!” retorted the young rebels. “You 
IS 


THE ARK OF 1803 

have got to sign that, and promise not to 
whip us ! ’’ 

“ Compacts with a mob ! Truces with 
rebels ! Never ! ” shouted the wordy old 
schoolmaster. 

Parley is at an end. Prepare to 
suffer. You shall have your deserts.” 

Master Hempstead hurled the wainut 
chip back in at the window — where it 
caused lively dodging of youthful heads — 
and made ready for active operations. 

At the wood-pile hard by lay a small 
hickory log, some ten feet in length and 
four or five inches in diameter. Heaving 
this up in his arms, he ran with it full tilt 
against the door, delivering a blow which 
made the whole house tremble and started 
the latch-bar in its socket. 

Hear that, ungrateful hearts ! ” he 
vociferated. “ I am now illustrating to ye 
the principle of the battering-ram, which 
played so noble a part in the wars of 

i6 


THE MASTER^S HOLIDAY 


antiquity. Vespasian and Titus employed 
it against the gates of stiff-necked Jerusalem. 
And thus do I batter in the gate of this 
stronghold of young deviltry 

He came bang ! against the door again, 
this time with such effect that the latch 
gave way and the benches were pushed back. 

Yet again the doughty pedagogue drew 
back, and panting hard, made another 
staggering rush with his improvised ram. 
This time the shock was so forceful that 
everything gave way, so suddenly that both 
master and ‘‘ram” fell in headlong at the 
doorway. 

The “ principle,” indeed, was well illus- 
trated ; but Master Hempstead had still to 
deal, hand to hand, with his youthful rebels. 

Lewis, Moses and the others were 
athletic youngsters, and the master, owing 
perhaps to his many “ vacations ” at 
Marietta, was at best somewhat tottery. 

The battle went sorely against him. 

17 


THE ARK OF 1803 


With shouts of triumph they dragged him 
forth into the yard, and holding him down 
in the snow, clamored loud for his signature. 
Still, with reproaches, he refused it, calling 
down upon them the vengeance of all 
known powers of good and evil. 

But now an interruption occurred. 
Milly Ayer, who had thus far sat quietly 
in the back row, now donned her hood in 
haste, and slipping forth in the midst of the 
melee, ran down to the creek bank, where 
the ark was being built, to summon aid. 

‘‘Help! help!’' she cried, then waved 
her red hood to attract attention, for her 
cries were drowned in the din of hammers 
below. 

Young Captain Royce was the first to 
see and hear. Between Milly and himself 
there had long existed a warm friendship. 

“ What is it, Milly? What’s happened?” 
he shouted, and all the hammers stopped 
short. 


i8 


THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 


“O Marion, come quick!” cried Milly. 
^‘They are fighting at the schoolhouse! ” 
The young captain was half-way up the 
bluff before these words were all spoken. 
The others followed him ; even old Jonas 
Sparks, Gaffir Hoyt and Uncle Amasa Clai- 
borne hurried stiffly to the schoolhouse in 
the wake of Marion Royce and Milly. 

But the most sedate of them could but 
smile at the spectacle which was there 
presented. Moses Ayer and Lewis Hoyt 
were holding Master Hempstead fast with 
his back to a tree trunk, while Louis Gist 
was trying to bind him to it with green 
hazel withes. The smaller boys, equally 
excited, were endeavoring to bear a hand, 
and yelled like young redskins ; while Molly 
Royce and the other girls looked on with 
something akin to enthusiasm. 

Here, here, boys I Do you know 
what you are doing?” the young captain 
exclaimed. 


19 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘‘What’s the trouble?” 

“He’s got to sign it!” shouted Moses, 
hotly. 

“Yes, he’s got to!” yelled Lewis. 

“Yes, Mack, help us make him sign 
it ! ” chimed in Molly Royce. 

“ Be quiet, Molly ! ” replied Marion, 
putting his impetuous young sister aside 
with one hand as he strode nearer. “We 
will see about this. Let go, Lewis ! Let 
go, Mose ! Master Hempstead, what’s the 
matter here ? ” 

The master, who had been kicking hard 
and hitting right and left at his assailants, 
recovered his dignity and struck an attitude. 

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is 
such ingratitude ! ” he cried, in injured 
accents. “These whom I have taught with 
so great patience, whose dull wits I have 
fostered, lo, they have lifted up the heel 
against me ! ” 

“ But what is it. Master Hempstead, 


20 


THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 


that they want you to sign ?’* asked Marion, 
laughing in spite of himself. 

‘‘ An exorbitant demand ! Preposterous 
extortion ! Stuck under my very nose at 
the schoolhouse door on an illiterate chip ! ” 
“And he’sgot tosign it!” interrupted Mose. 

“ But what is it ? Let’s see it,” said 
Marion. 

With that, Jimmy Hoyt came running 
with the chip, which, on being read aloud, 
caused Jonas Sparks and Uncle Amasa Clai- 
borne, who had now come up, to chuckle 
audibly. 

“ And I kinder reckon, master, that 
they was in a fair way to make ye put yer 
name to it 1 ” cried the old shipwright. 
“ I guess ye better sign it.” 

“No, no, but the rising gineration 
musn’t be incouraged to be sassy 1 ” cried 
Gaffir Hoyt. “They’re sassy enough now. 
Give ’em an inch and they’ll take an ell.” 
Uncle Amasa agreed with him. 


21 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Cut some switches and drub the young 
scamps,” said Uncle Amasa. 

Public opinion being thus divided, every 
one, including Milly Ayer, looked to Marion 
for the guiding word. Already this little 
community had come to rely upon his 
judgment in emergencies. 

The young captain laughed good- 
humoredly. ‘‘I don’t want to set my word 
before that of my elders,” he said, “but 
drubbing isn’t always the best medicine. 
The boys have been rough and hasty. But 
from all accounts. Master Hempstead hasn’t 
set them quite so good an example of late 
as we wish he would. Lewis, you and Mose 
and Molly must beg Master Hempstead’s 
forgiveness for misusing him. If they do that, 
you will overlook it, master, will you not?” 

“Hey, what? Forgive them!” cried 
the still agitated pedagogue. “ Forgive 
them 1 Well, anything but their bad spell- 
ing 1 Anything but that 1 ” 


22 



“ HEY, WHAT? FORGIVE THEM ! ” 


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THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 


*‘Wal, master, that is a fault you must 
try to remedy ! ” cried old Jonas, laughing. 
“ Good spelling is the gift of Heaven. I 
only wish that it had been given to me.” 

‘‘But the holiday!” exclaimed Molly. 
“We want the holiday!” 

“ What do you say. Master Hempstead ? ” 
Marion asked him, with much respect. 
His manner did more than any words could 
have done to remind the young people of 
the great regard in which a master was and 
should be held. “A holiday to celebrate 
the admission of Ohio to the Union would 
be no very bad thing, would it? Suppose 
you give them one and let us all come 
to it.” 

“ But I haven’t the means. I’m a poor 
man ! ” protested the master. “ Candy and 
raisins cost good money at Marietta.” 

“And so does gin and whisky! ” mut- 
tered Moses, under his breath. 

“Hush, Moses!” said Marion. He 


23 


THE ARK OF 1803 

turned to the other older men. How 
would it be if we all give something, and 
have the celebration next month just before 
the ark starts to New Orleans?” 

The faces of the young people fell vis- 
ibly at this suggestion of postponement, but 
the motion was carried, and it was arranged 
that the holiday should take place the day 
before the ark should leave for its long 
adventurous voyage down the Mississippi. 

The master pointed to the gaping 
schoolhouse doorway. ‘‘ In, ye renegades,” 
he ordered, and they trooped noisily in to 
straighten the overturned benches and settle 
down to their study after the four days of 
unofficial vacation. 

Jimmy Claiborne did not follow them. 
He waited until the men were starting back 
to the shipyard, then he stopped Marion 
Royce. 

‘‘ Louis Gist says you won’t let me go 
on the ark,” he said, fixing the young 
24 


THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 


captain with his sombre, discontented eyes. 
“ I guess Uncle Amasa could make you, 
seeing what a share we’ve got in the cargo, 
but I just wanted to ask you if it’s true — 
what Louis said — that you don’t want me.” 

Marion wished, as he looked gravely at 
the boy, that the ark were not taking the 
Claiborne’s share of the cargo at all, but he 
only said : 

‘^That depends on yourself, Jimmy.” 

Jimmy made no answer in words. He 
turned and strode off towards the woods 
behind the schoolhouse clearing. Marion 
called to him, but he gave no sign of 
hearing, and after waiting a moment longer 
Marion went back to his work. 


25 


CHAPTER II 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 

OUNG Captain Royce 
went slowly back to 
the shipyard, thinking 
of the sullen look in 
Jimmy Claiborne’s 
eyes. 

“ The boy means to 
make trouble,” he said 
to himself. But beyond the annoyance 
which would result from being obliged to 
refuse, if Jimmy got Uncle Amasa to plead 
for him, there seemed to be nothing much 
that Jimmy could do. Young as he was — 
scarcely twenty-two — Marion Royce had 
already won the confidence of the settlement 
by his courage and coolness, and those who 
had chosen him as leader and captain would 
certainly uphold him in any position which 
26 



THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


he might take in regard to the selection of 
his crew. But between being merely up- 
held in a disagreeable duty, and having the 
cordial good feeling of all the shareholders, 
there was much to choose. 

He was tempted, as he went along 
through the woods between the little ship- 
yard and the schoolhouse, to turn a deaf ear 
to his own better judgment. But he had made 
three trips down the river to New Orleans, 
and he knew the importance of an efficient 
crew, just as he knew the danger of a single 
insubordinate spirit. 

If it were anybody else but Jimmy 
Claiborne,” he thought, ‘‘ it would not so 
much matter.” There were the twenty 
barrels of peach brandy and whisky — the 
Claiborne's share of the cargo — and in the 
long monotonous days and nights only 
ceaseless vigilance would keep the men 
from broaching them. If Jimmy were in 
the crew, his sense of proprietorship in this 
27 


THE ARK OF 1803 


portion of the cargo would make the danger 
of it very much greater. 

It was a voyage of untold perils. Every 
year an increasing number of white outlaws, 
hidden in the caves along the river, harried 
and robbed the boatmen who floated down 
from the upper settlements. There were 
lurking bands of hostile Indians. And there 
was the river itself with its treacheries; its 
snags; its mud bars and its floods. It was 
no unusual thing for an ark to set out as 
this one was about to do, provided against 
all foreseeable disasters, and never be heard 
from afterward. Some were wrecked, some 
were robbed and their crews obscurely 
murdered. But no tidings of their fate 
came back to the solitary homes on the 
upper Ohio. 

To set out on such a voyage with a 
single man or boy who could not be trusted, 
might mean the loss of the boat or even of 
every life on board of her. Marion Royce 
28 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


looked ahead of him, suddenly throwing 
back his shoulders and breathing deeply. 

‘‘It’s got to come, and it had better be 
over with at once,” he said aloud. “Oh, 
Uncle Amasa ! Ho, Uncle Amasa ! Hold 
on and let me catch up with you ! ” 

The old man could be seen through the 
thinning trees that covered the slope leading 
down to the creek’s mouth. He stopped 
and waited for the captain to come up to 
him. 

“We’ll get them twenty barrels down 
from the still this afternoon, son,” he be- 
gan, as Marion joined him. “It’s time to 
get your cargo collected, and them casks 
will do just as well down here at the shed 
where there’s room for ’em. We’re pretty 
crowded with them up to the still.” 

“It isn’t the cargo I’m worrying so 
much about,” said the captain slowly. 
“ It’s the supercargo.” 

The old man looked at him shrewdly. 

29 


THE ARK OF 1803 

He understood as well as if Marion had 
told him in so many words that he did not 
want to take Jimmy. 

‘‘It’s a rough voyage,” the captain said. 
“ If I thought it would help to make a man 
of Jimmy I’d take him and risk his stirring 
up a feeling of insubordination in those 
Marietta fellows that he knows better than 
I do. But my feeling is that Jimmy ought 
to stay at home. There’s plenty of chance 
for him to show what stuff he’s made of, 
and if we get back all right we may be 
able to take him next year. The boy’s a 
little wild, and it won’t do him any good 
to go to Natchez — all devildom is loose at 
Natchez. And then there may be a French 
fleet at New Orleans. There may be 
fighting. The Spaniards may have shut 
the city in our faces. We may have to 
fight to be allowed to land, but if we do 
have to, I guess ten thousand or so rivermen 
will help us to show the Spanish governor 

30 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


whether he can shut the gate of the world 
to us Americans.” 

‘‘Ye think there’s any truth in that tale 
of Bonaparte’s seizing the Mississippi, son?” 

“No,” said the captain, “I don’t.” 
“ I believe Jefferson is going to buy out 
the Spaniards or drive them home, and that 
the country will belong to us clear to the 
sea.” 

“ Hm,” said the old man. “ Well, son, 
if there’s goin’ to be any such doings down 
to New Orleans, I’d be terrible sorry for 
Jimmy to miss it. I reckon I couldn’t very 
well leave Maria. I expect I’m pretty 
tolerable old for a trip like what you say it 
is to go down the river, even when every- 
thing is fav’rable. I’d mebby do best to 
cossett what’s left of my scalp and not run 
the risk of losing it to a strange Indian 
when I could just as easy lose it to one 
nearer home. I don’t reckon Maria would 
consent to my going, but I’d set a right 

31 


THE ARK OF 1803 


smart store on one of our family havin’ a 
hand in them doin’s down to New Orleans, 
and I reckon them rivermen at Natchez 
won’t corrupt Jim any more than the 
roustabouts around Marietta shipyard. I just 
reckon you’ll have to take him along, son.” 

There was no resentment whatever in 
the old man’s tone. He made no defense 
of Jimmy, although Jimmy was his idolized 
grandson, and Jimmy’s father had been 
taken captive by the Indians before Jimmy 
was a year old — which was sixteen years 
ago — and nothing had ever been heard of 
him. But Uncle Amasa had lived as a 
pioneer among pioneers, where every man 
had to stand by himself, for himself, and for 
those whom his presence protected. He 
made no defense of Jimmy. 

There was an uncomfortably long pause. 
They were near enough to the little ship- 
yard at the mouth of the creek, so that they 
stopped to finish their discussion before they 
32 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


joined the men who were working. Little 
old Uncle Amasa stood shrunken like a 
withered bush on which a workman had 
hung his coat and cap. Captain Royce 
faced him, young and alert and vigorous, 
sure of his judgment, but reluctant to oppose 
the old man whom the entire settlement 
loved. 

‘‘ Uncle Amasa,” he said at length, 
smiling at the shrewd light-gray eyes that 
looked into his, ‘‘you’ve always been too 
hasty.” 

“Aye,” admitted the old pioneer, “and 
if rd been a trifle hastier, Fd a saved my 
whole scalp instead of only half of it. It’s 
a grand thing to be hasty, son, when you’re 
dealing with savages.” 

“You were hasty when you bought the 
still without considering how it would 
affect the settlement here,” continued the 
captain, gravely. “ Until this year, good 
Master Hempstead and his like had to go 
33 


THE ARK OF 1803 


clear to Marietta to indulge their little foi- 
bles. You want me to tell you why you 
are so anxious to have Jimmy go with me 
on this trip ? It’s because you see you were 
too hasty, and you want to separate him as 
far as possible from that new still. But I’m 
afraid that you can’t do that so long as I am 
taking the twenty barrels of brandy and 
whisky along in the cargo. I’ll take the 
cargo, or I’ll take Jimmy. I can’t take 
both even for all the things you’ve done for 
me and mine, and for the help you’ve been 
in building the ark here. As long as I’m 
captain, and the whole settlement has 
appointed me to represent them in disposing 
of their year’s harvest and work, I owe 
my first duty to the safety of the cargo 
and the lives I’m taking along with me. 
The Marietta hands will have no right in the 
boat, and I can handle them if Jimmy isn’t 
along to stir up insubordination.” 

‘‘ He’ll be along,” said Uncle Amasa, 
34 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


cheerily. ‘‘If there are to be doin s at 
New Orleans, Ed like for him to see them 
and have them to tell to his children when 
he grows old. Life is pretty much all in 
the way you see it, and Fve seen a heap, 
and I want that Jimmy should. The only 
comfort Fve ever had in these long years 
since his pa disappeared is been in thinking 
of the strange secrets he must have got to 
know. I reckon if James was to come back 
from captivity alive, Fd be so curious to 
hear about his experiences that Fd clean 
forget to rejoice at having him home again.” 

The young captain looked at Uncle 
Amasa. Queer characters were the rule 
rather than the exception among the settlers 
who had willingly turned their backs 
on civilization and safety, but in all his 
experience he knew of no other pioneer 
whose foolhardiness could be inspired by 
sheer curiosity. 

“Do you mean to say. Uncle Amasa, 
35 


THE ARK OF 1803 


that since you can’t go yourself the chance 
of your grandson seeing new things makes 
you insist upon my taking him, even if his 
presence jeopardizes the welfare and success 
of the whole expedition ?” 

‘‘Jimmy will be good, I reckon,” said 
the old man, “and he’s old enough now; 
so I should like for him to see a little of 
the world.” 

“You’re a shareholder, like the rest of 
us,” said the captain, “and I don’t mean to 
seem disrespectful ; but I think you’re acting 
hastily. Uncle Amasa, and I hope you won’t 
encourage Jimmy to feel that he has a right 
to come without my consent, for I should 
have to put him off, and that would be a 
humiliation, and I don’t want to embitter 
him any more than I can help. But I 
won’t have him on the ark, and that’s all I 
can say about it.” 

“Well, well, we won’t discuss it, son; 
we won’t discuss it at all,” said Uncle 
36 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


Amasa. ‘‘But Fd like to know how ye 
think I would look going back to his 
widowed mother and telling her that you 
didn’t trust her only son to conduct himself 
as bravely as any of you?” 

A smile broke over the young captain’s 
face at the idea of any such message going 
to the acrid lady who had made the 
Claiborne’s home-clearing a place to be 
cautiously approached and discreetly avoided. 
“I wouldn’t say anything to Maria at all,” 
he advised. “ I would just gradually get 
Jimmy out of the notion.” 

The captain felt that he had not come 
out of the argument at all well. It seemed 
rather absurd for a man to set himself 
against a boy — a boy, moreover, whom he 
had seen grow up — but there were so many 
reasons for Jimmy’s own sake why he 
should not be allowed to go that Uncle 
Amasa’s calm refusal to even consider them 
filled him with uneasiness. If the grand- 
37 


THE ARK OF 1803 


son proved as unimpressionable as the 
grandfather, there was trouble ahead. And 
Marion Royce felt that he was undertaking 
enough in this venture without adding any- 
thing that might bring about disorder or 
mutiny. 

They went down the hill, the captain 
silent. Uncle Amasa gossiping cheerily as 
a snow-bird, and both men were soon at 
work on the great ninety-foot ark or 
‘‘broadhorn” that still rested on its rude 
ways at the edge of the creek. 

‘‘ We’ll get it into the water before 
night,” said the captain, looking lovingly 
at the unweildy bulk that was more like a 
scow, built to be towed, than like a boat 
designed to navigate itself among channels 
and currents. It would, indeed, be more 
at the mercy of the elements than any scow, 
because its high freeboard would catch the 
wind as well as its clumsy upper deck. It 
was built of rough hewn timbers, and put 

38 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


together with pins and treenails, so that it 
could be readily taken apart and sold as 
lumber for house-building in New Orleans, 
when its service as a cargo boat should be 
over. 

Jonas Sparks, the old Marietta ship- 
wright, who was overseeing the work, 
nodded at the captain. There was still a 
vast amount of decking or roofing to be 
done, and for this some of the lumber was 
still to be brought over from Marietta saw- 
mill. 

“It would be a good job done,’* said 
Jonas Sparks, “if you could get your 
timber sawed up to Marietta while she 
is swelling. It will save that much 
time.” 

“ The new Pittsburgh mill hands haven’t 
come,” said the captain, “and they can’t 
get enough men at Marietta to work on 
the new brig and run the mill. The men 
won’t work. I expect we’ll have to go up 
39 


THE ARK OF 1803 

and saw the lumber ourselves. What do 
you think?’’ 

‘‘Well,” said Jonas, to whom the diffi- 
culty of getting any sort of skilled or regular 
labor was too familiar to cause annoyance, 
“we’ll just put her into the water and see 
what can be done about getting the boards. 
There comes Charlie Hoyt with another 
load of the Claiborne’s whisky.” 

A wagon team was drawing into the 
shipyard clearing with a load of casks. 
Everyone about the ark went to the shed 
in which the cargo for the ark was being 
gradually piled up, and soon the men were 
busy helping Charlie Hoyt unload. When 
he had finally driven off again, considerable 
time had been wasted, and in the afternoon, 
when the boys trooped down after school 
to help in the launching, they found that it 
had been necessary to postpone it for 
another day. Next month, when the river 
should have risen with the melting snows, 
40 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


the delay of a day might mean all the dif- 
ference between success and failure, safety 
and total wreck. But the Ohio was still 
locked between its ice banks, below the 
mouth of the creek, and a day meant little 
or nothing to the pioneers of the wilder- 
ness. 

As thieving Indians occasionally slipped 
into the clearings at night, Jonas Sparks 
had volunteered to sleep in the shed, which 
served as storage warehouse for such por- 
tions of the cargo as the settlers had already 
brought down. He took his meals at the 
Royces, however, and it was sometimes late 
before he picked up his lantern and his rifle 
and went over to the shipyard. 

It was late that night. There was no 
moon, and his lighted lantern showed the 
tree trunks like moving shapes in the snow ; 
but the old shipwright trudged along as 
fearless as in the open day, swinging his 
lantern as if it did not make him a target 


41 


THE ARK OF 1803 


for any unseen red or white enemy who 
might be skulking through the woods. 

Suddenly he began to run. Flames had 
shot up in the clearing around the shipyard, 
and he heard the crackle of the huge pillar 
of fire that flared and waved to the height 
of the treetops. 

‘‘The ark is burning!’’ he shouted, 
forgetting in his excitement that no one 
could possibly hear him. He rushed down 
to the clearing and saw the great flames 
lapping up the shed like thirsty dogs. 
Bright embers floated out over the trees, 
and some circled down onto the ark, which 
had not yet begun to burn. As the old 
shipbuilder saw all this, he realized that 
the fire was too far along for anyone to stop 
it or to hope to save any of the cargo in 
the shed. The light in the sky would soon 
bring all the settlers in the neighborhood, 
accustomed as they were to an alert vigilance 
against Indian surprises. So he hurried 
42 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


down to the creek to break through the 
covering of snowy ice and carry bucketful 
upon bucketful of water, which he poured 
over the half-decked boat. The intense 
heat of the lire so close at hand was scorch- 
ing the timbers and the steam rose in white 
masses as the icy creek water ran in thin 
streams over the ark. 

Marion Royce was the first to reach the 
fire. The flames were at their height, 
waving long streamers above the treetops so 
that their light could be seen for ten miles 
down the river, and settlers farther down 
thought that Marietta was burning. 

‘‘What could have started it?” asked 
the captain, as he and Jonas came up from 
the creek with a hogshead nearly filled 
between them. 

“ I can’t imagine,” said the shipbuilder. 
“The Indians would rather have stolen 
the stuff than burnt it up, and no one round 
hereabouts has any grudge agin’ the ark.” 

43 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘‘You didn’t see anyone?” asked the 
captain. 

“ No one but Jimmy Claiborne,” an- 
swered Jonas. “Just as I came into the 
clearing I saw him runnin’ for dear life 
along the road to the Ayreses, to get help, 
I reckon, and that’s why I didn’t lose any 
time carryin’ the alarm. I knew he’d take 
it.” 

“Jimmy Claiborne!” echoed the cap- 
tain. A thought flashed into his mind, but 
he refused to consider it. 

“ I wonder if we couldn’t slide the 
blocks out from under her and let her drop 
down the ways,” he said. “ She’s begin- 
ning to burn here at the bow, from the 
heat. We can’t keep her from burning. 
The ways are bound to go. Look, Jonas 1 
Merciful goodness — Look out 1 ” 

The shed had caved in. The column 
of fire hung for a moment like the jet of a 
waterspout, then dropped back into the 


44 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 

heart of the fire, and the flames billowed 
out in a huge circle that swept the bows of 
the ark and curled in blue threads about 
the ways on which it rested. 

‘‘We can’t do it singlehanded,” shouted 
Jonas, above the terrible roar of the fire. 
“We can’t move it. It’s got to go unless 
somebody comes to help us. It’s frozen to 
the ways and the tackle is all in the shed.” 

“We’ve got to do it,” the captain 
shouted back. He took up a puncheon 
maul and began desperately pounding at the 
blocks that kept the ninety-foot hull from 
dropping down the snowy, ice-crusted ways. 

“ Great stars, man, can’t you let it 
alone .? ” cried the shipwright. “ Can’t 
you see that even if you did start her she’d 
smash herself on the bottom of the creek? 
We’ve got to have men and tackle to let 
her down.” 

There was a shout from the edge of the 
clearing, and Jonas and the captain turned to 
45 


THE ARK OF 1803 


see Moses Ayer and Lewis Hoyt and Louis 
Gist come plunging towards them, having 
outrun their elders who were following. 

‘‘ Run to Uncle Amasa’s to get his 
hoisting tackle,” cried Jonas to Louis Gist. 
“We’ve got to launch the ark, and every- 
thing we had here is burning up in the 
shed. Here, Mose, come and tote water.” 

The two boys hurried to carry out his 
orders, and Lewis Hoyt caught up a board 
and began shoveling snow onto the ark. 
The heat was frightful, and the boys smelt 
their buckskins singeing as they rushed 
about the fire, and the cinders fell on 
them. 

“Where’s Jimmy Claiborne?” asked 
Moses Ayer when Louis came back alone 
with the rope and tackle, staggering under 
the weight of the heavy coil. 

“Wasn’t there,” gasped Louis. “Uncle 
Amasa’s on the way, though.” 

Marion Royce turned sharply to Moses. 

46 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


‘‘Jimmy went to your house to give the 
alarm/’ he said. 

“He never came to our house,” declared 
Moses. “ I saw the fire myself, through 
the chink over my bed where the plug has 
come out. I called Pop and came over. 
Jimmy never came near us.” 

The captain’s face set. “We’ve no 
time to bother about Jimmy, now,” he 
said. “One of you carry this tackle into 
that biggest walnut tree and make it fast 
about fifteen feet above the ground. It’s 
only to steady the strain as she drops down. 
Make it fast, though. We don’t want it 
giving way.” 

Moses was already half way to the tree. 
“ All right,” he shouted. 

Lighted only by the fire that reflected 
red pools in the snow, the men and boys 
worked at the launching that should save 
the ark. The great flatboat was frozen to 
the ways, and it seemed as if nothing but 
47 


THE ARK OF 1803 


superhuman power would ever start it. 
Then, suddenly, an appalling report came 
from the burning shed. The ground shook 
with it, and the flames burst out again into 
vast torches that flared above the trees a 
moment and then fell back extinguished. 
Timbers and brands of fire shot hither and 
thither through the air. The men sprung 
away with terrorized faces. 

‘‘ The whisky casks have burst,” said 
the captain. “I thought they had gone 
long ago. Is anyone hurt?” 

At the edge of the clearing the light of the 
flames showed a figure outstretched — a grim 
patch of darkness on the reddened snow. 

Lewis Hoyt was the first to reach it. 
He turned to face the anxious men who 
hurried to him. 

‘‘It’s Master Hempstead!” he cried. 
“He isn’t killed. This beam must have 
struck him and knocked him down as he 
was coming to the fire.” 

48 


THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 


Half a dozen men bent down to examine 
the crumpled figure of the unconscious 
schoolmaster, and as they were separating 
to let the captain and Charlie Hoyt carry 
him away to be cared for by the women at 
the Royces, a shout made them turn to the 
fire again. 

The ark ! ” cried a dozen voices. 

The ark is going ! ” 

The vibration of the explosion had 
accomplished what the men alone could 
not have done, and the ark was slipping 
down the ways. 

‘‘Here,” cried Marion Royce, “take 
this,” and quite unconscious that it was a 
human being whom he was handing over 
absently, he dashed back to the assistance 
of Jonas Sparks. 

But by the time he reached the ways 
the ark was grinding the ice of the creek, 
her bottom scraping the bed of the shallow 
stream. 


49 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Moses Ayer came up, trembling from 
the terrible strain on the windlass when the 
ark shot down. The perspiration was 
raining down his drawn, excited face. 

She’s launched ! ” he said. 


50 


CHAPTER III 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 

A S the captain handed over the 
^ schoolmaster’s inert form, 

he was too full of alarm 

L to notice that the arms 
which received it were 
Jimmy Claiborne’s. 

‘‘ Is he dead ?” asked 
Jimmy, in a hoarse whisper. 
Charlie Hoyt stared at him. “ Dod 
rot!” he ejaculated. “You’re trembling I 
What’s the matter with you ? The master’s 
not dead. Look at that.” 

Then Jimmy saw the school-mas- 

ter’s breath coming faintly like a frosty 
thread. He drew his own breath more 
freely. 

“ If you’re afraid to carry him. I’ll call 
Mose,” went on Charlie. “ He’s hurt on 

51 



THE ARK OF 1803 

the head. If it weren’t for that we could 
leave him over there by the fire till he 
sobers up. I wonder where he got it. 
Stocked up at Marietta, most likely. Here’s 
part of a corn-bin cover, shot out of the 
fire. We can lay him on that. It will 
carry better.” 

The long bin cover, with its charred 
edges, was a clumsy thing to carry, and the 
two stumbled slowly along the dark path 
to the Royce’s cabin. They set their bur- 
den down several times to rest and get a 
better hold. Once Charlie fell and the 
schoolmaster slid from his rude stretcher 
into the snow. Perspiring and breathless 
they picked him up again and went heavily 
on. 

Several women had gathered at the 
Royce’s from the neighboring cabins. 
They were all brave women, used to the 
alarms and hardships of their wild life, and 
they received the little party, that looked so 

52 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 

much grimmer than it was, without ex- 
citement. 

‘Ht looks to me kinder like a fight,” 
said Charlie, when he had examined the 
master’s bruises carefully in the light of a 
tallow dip. 

‘‘ It must have been a fight,” said Mrs. 
Royce. ‘‘ That is never a blow from a 
flying timber. His eye is puffing up, too. 
He couldn’t have been lying long when you 
found him.” 

The master roused a little. His arm 
went out as if to ward a blow. ‘‘ They’ll 
drive — me — out,” he muttered. “How — 
tish y’se’f — cherished ’n my bosom — ’n ye 
turn — gainsht me.” His arm fell and he 
began to weep; a pitiable object. 

Jimmy had taken no part in his resusci- 
tation. He stood looking into the fire, 
beside the hearth. Now that he no longer 
feared that the schoolmaster would die, he 
was absorbed in his own sullen thoughts. 

S3 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Milly Ayer saw his look, and his clenched 
hands, and went over to him. 

“You didn’t come back to school,” she 
said. “We missed you.” 

“I’ll never go back to that school,” he 
answered. She could see the flush creep 
over his dark face. 

“Oh, Jimmy!” she said. “When 
there’s hardly a month more before every- 
body will be going off on the ark ? ” 

“That’s why.” 

Milly reddened. She had forgotten in 
the excitement of the fire the trouble of 
the morning that had brought the quarrel 
between Jimmy and Louis Gist. She was 
about to tell him that Marion would change 
his mind, when the door flew open and 
her brother Mose and Shadwell Lincoln 
burst in. 

“The ark is all safe,” they both cried 
at once. “The men are going to stay 
about and watch, though. Everything’s 
54 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 


gone. All the flax, and the HoyCs corn, 
and the Claiborne whisky. And pretty 
near all the carpentering tools of the neigh- 
borhood.” 

It was a grave loss. Tools were ex- 
pensive and hard to get, and the rotted flax 
that had been stored in the shed had been 
intended to clothe the settlement for a year. 

“Has anyone found out who started it?” 
asked Mrs. Royce, to turn the thoughts of 
the others from their common loss. 

Moses threw a meaning look toward 
Jimmy Claiborne. “We haven’t found outf 
he said, with hot-headed emphasis, “but 
everybody has a suspicion. It was done by 
someone who had a grudge agin the ark 
and wanted to set it afire to spite Marion 
Royce. The ark’s built of such heavy 
timber that it wouldn’t burn easily, but if 
the shed burned the ark was bound to go 
with it. And it would have gone, too, if 
Jonas and Marion hadn’t saved it.” 

55 


THE ARK OF 1803 


^‘No one in the settlement would have 
taken such a revenge as that,” said Mrs. 
Royce. 

“ Just you wait and see,” said Mose. He 
was boiling with indignation. Not that he 
had anything against Jimmy Claiborne, 
himself. He was simply a born partisan. 
Whatever came up, he must take sides and, 
usually, come to blows to settle it. Until 
a blow had been struck, Mose seldom 
considered a matter disposed of. He bore 
upon his person the evidence that he lived 
up to his point of view. ‘‘ I guess whoever 
did it will be found out pretty soon, and 
’pears to me Fish Creek won’t be the place 
for him after that.” 

The women who had joined in the 
growing disapproval of the Claibornes in 
regard to bringing a still into Fish Creek 
settlement found themselves embarrassed at 
having the prejudice taking such direct 
expression. They wished they had not all 

56 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 


spoken so openly before those who were too 
young to reason or be discreet. It was 
Milly who saved the situation. 

‘‘ I ought to go home,” she said. 
“ Mother and the children are alone. Mose, 
are you coming?” 

‘‘ I can’t,” said Mose. Eve got to 
help Marion. He wants me to be on hand. 
Mebby to-morrow he’ll want us to start up 
to Marietta to help cut the lumber, if the 
new hands don’t get there from Pittsburgh. 
The new brig’s keeping everyone busy over 
to Marietta.” 

‘‘Jimmy,” said Milly, “will you take 
me? ” 

Jimmy reached for a rifle that stood 
among several muskets in a rude rack near 
the fireplace. The Ayers’ clearing was one 
of the farthest away, and while the neigh- 
borhood had been safe from prowling 
Indians for over a year the men still went 
about armed at night. He looked carefully 
57 


THE ARK OF 1803 


to the flint and priming, and taking it in 
his arm, waited for her while she said good- 
night. 

For awhile they trudged in silence. 
Mose’s ill-considered words were ringing in 
their ears. As they skirted the shipyard 
clearing they saw the men silhouetted against 
the burning heap of ruins. Jimmy gripped 
his rifle in a spasm of unreasoning hate. 
He wondered how little old Uncle Amasa 
could be among them ; friendly, wise, har- 
boring no resentment. 

‘‘ Isn’t that Uncle Amasa, there by the 
maple tree.?” asked Milly. 

‘‘Yes, that’s him,” said Jimmy. 
“’Twouldn’t be me^ that’s certain.” 

“It’s all a mistake,” said Milly. “You 
mustn’t think of what schoolboys say.” 

“ I guess they heard their elders say it. 
It wouldn’t have come popping into their 
heads alone.” 

“You mustn’t mind,” she said. 

S8 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 


‘‘You don’t catch me minding,” said 
Jimmy, throwing his head back. “ I’m not 
through with Fish Creek settlement yet.” 

There was a long silence, broken only 
by their feet in the crusted snow. Milly 
thought pityingly of the thankless home 
that Maria Claiborne had made for Jimmy 
and his grandfather. She wished that 
Marion had not said so positively that he 
would not have Jimmy on the ark. She 
would talk to Marion to-morrow and try to 
win him over. Now that the Claiborne 
cargo was destroyed, he would be apt to re- 
consider. 

“You may get a chance to go to New 
Orleans, after all,” she said. “ You mustn’t 
blame Marion, Jimmy. Think of the re- 
sponsibility he will have, every day and night 
of that longjourney — and, perhaps, fighting.” 

“ Well, I guess I can hold up my end of 
the fighting,” said Jimmy. “ I never failed 
to do it yet.” 


59 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘‘That’s the trouble,” said Milly. “You 
and Kenton and McAfee are so quarrelsome.” 

“I know what you mean, Milly,” said 
Jimmy, feeling his heart harden against 
even her friendliness. “You’re going to 
try to persuade Marion to take me. Well, 
I ain’t going to have you do it. I won’t go. 
Not that way. Marion’s got to take me 
because I’m as good a man as the rest of ’em, 
or I don’t go. And if he should happen to 
change his mind and want me, he’ll have to 
ask me mighty perticular. I won’t be hang- 
ing round having every one point to me as 
the boy that set fire to the building shed.” 

“ What are you going to do ? ” she asked, 
anxiously. “ Oh, Jimmy, promise me that 
it won’t be something you’ll be sorry for.” 

“ Sorry ? I guess not. I haven’t decided 
what I’ll do yet,” he added. “I’m going 
down to my place and think about it, and 
mebby get some beaver skins. The last time 
I was down I saw signs of them on a little 
6o 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 

creek. They're mighty scarce now. Uncle 
Amasa says they won’t be a beaver between 
here and Cincinnati next year.” 

Milly felt relieved. The place Jimmy 
spoke of was an almost unbroken strip of 
forest, about five miles away, on which 
Jimmy had made ‘‘tomahawk improve- 
ments ” — girdled a few trees and planted a 
little patch of corn. He and Uncle Amasa 
had built a cabin there, and sometimes 
stayed there for weeks on end when Maria 
was more than usually fiery- tempered. 
Trappers knew the little cabin well. 

“ You won’t go till Marion gets through 
with the lumber sawing?” she asked. 
“There’ll be so few men at the settlement 
if they have to help saw lumber up at 
Marietta.” 

Jimmy could not see her face, but her 
matter-of-course tone staggered him. He 
wondered if girls could really feel things — 
if they had real pride; if they understood 
6i 


THE ARK OF 1803 


what it was to smart under a wrong until 
the pain cried for a sharp revenge. He 
shut his teeth on the hard words that came 
to him, and after a moment, said quietly: 

^‘No, Milly. I can’t wait. I’ve got 
to get away. I guess I wasn’t made for 
civilization. I guess I don’t fit.” 

They were entering the clearing about 
the Ayers’ cabin. Light came through the 
window, showing that the fire was being 
kept up and that those within were astir. 

‘H’ll watch you inside the door,” 
Jimmy said, halting in the path. 

‘‘Won’t you come in?” she begged. 
“You can sleep in Mose’s shake-down in 
the loft.” 

A little shiver passed through him. 
“In Mosers shake-down?” he repeated. 
“ No, I’m obliged to you just as much. I’ll 
trouble you to keep this gun for Marion. 
It’s his. I won’t have a chance to re- 
turn it.” 


62 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 

“ Why, Jimmy, you aren’t going into 
the woods to-night ? ” 

‘‘Why not?” he asked. “Haven’t I 
been in the woods at night before this ? 
Run in, now. Good night, Milly.” 

The girl stood, helpless against the 
bitterness in his guarded voice. 

“ Good night, Milly.” 

“Good night,” she faltered. “Oh, 
Jimmy, it’s perfectly terrible for you to 
go .” 

She moved slowly towards the door. 
He watched her indistinct figure blend into 
the shadow of the cabin wall. Then the 
door opened, letting a flood of light across 
the snow. Mrs. Ayer stood in the doorway 
a moment while Milly said something to 
her, and then she called : 

“Jimmy Claiborne, come in this min- 
ute, child ! ” 

Jimmy slipped behind a tree. 

“Jimmy?” 


63 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Still he made no answer. The warmth 
and the sight of the two women waiting 
for him, with nothing but kindness and 
tenderness in their hearts, moved him 
strangely. He was so unused to it. But 
he did not answer, and after waiting a 
moment longer they stepped back inside 
and the door shut them from his sight. 

Choking down something that smarted 
in his throat, he strode away from the 
clearing. 

Twenty minutes later he had reached 
the Claiborne home cabin. He knocked 
sharply on the door. 

‘‘Let me in,'’ he shouted. “Ma! 
It's me. I want to get my gun." 

No answer came from within. He 
pounded with both fists. “ Ma ! " he re- 
peated. 

After awhile he realized that his mother 
must be awake, and he changed his voice 
from a shout to a conversational tone. “ I 
64 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 


only want my gun,” he said, persuasively. 
“ There’s been a big fire at the shipyard, 
and all our whisky’s burned up. Let me 
in and I’ll tell you about it.” 

He began to narrate the events of the 
night, taking heart as he heard a slight stir 
inside the cabin. He talked on, apparently 
telling the story to the panel of the thick, 
treenail - studded door. When he had 
finished he repeated his petition, “ I only 
want my gun, Ma.” 

The one window opened a crack and 
something struck Jimmy on the head. It 
was a powder horn. Then his gun came 
rattling after it, and the window shut deci- 
sively. Jimmy picked up his gun. 

‘‘ I hope Uncle Amasa don’t calculate to 
come back to-night,” he reflected. I guess 
Ma didn’t like his going off like that to the 
fire and leaving the cabin unprotected. But la, 
it would be a brave Indian that would break 
into Ma’s cabin when she didn’t want him to.” 

65 


THE ARK OF 1803 

With his gun in his arm he felt himself 
again. He struck - briskly into the woods, 
following paths as familiar to him as the 
roads about the settlement. Nothing stirred 
the deep loneliness — but he was not lonely. 
He crossed the Ayers’ tract, the four hun- 
dred acres belonging to the Lincolns, the 
Hoyts’ improved lands, crossed a branch of 
the river and entered the unbroken timber. 
There was almost no wind. The frosty air 
still gave no hint of morning, and the 
occasional breaks in the trees showed a sky 
brilliantly crowded with stars. 

The anger died slowly out of him. If 
he had turned back it would have flamed 
up again ; but, as he drew steadily away from 
the scene of his wounded pride, his wrongs 
seemed to be left behind and he felt only 
the drowsiness of his long tramp. He 
would have been glad to crawl into the 
hollow of a rotten tree, but he was too 
wary, and he held on, crunching through 
66 


JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 

the untrodden snow, his feet moving in a 
sort of rythm with the unformed thoughts 
that kept moving in his brain. The dim 
knowledge that it was good to be away 
from other human beings, who disapproved 
of his restlessness — for Jimmy’s outbreaks 
were always the result of restlessness — that 
it would be good to creep a little further 
into the wilderness, where the white men 
had never yet trod, arid that this was what 
made Uncle Amasa dwell wistfully on the 
past when he had been a pioneer in the 
territory — all this and more slipped through 
his thoughts. The spell of the wilderness 
was on him, and he looked forward to the 
days he would spend in the hut, watching 
his traps and collecting pelts for the ark to 
take down to New Orleans. His face grew 
hard again as the thought of the ark crossed 
his mind. His fist clenched. 

‘‘ ril pay them,” he muttered. 


67 


CHAPTER IV 



JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 

S Jimmy began to approach 
his own cabin a long, 
mournful howl reached 
him and he threw 
up his head like an an- 
imal, scenting danger. 
More howls. He 
stood motionless, listening. For a moment 
there was silence, and then the howling 
began again. It was not growing nearer. 

“ Timber wolves,” he muttered. “ IPs 
been a hard winter and they’re coming 
nearer the settlements. I wonder what 
they’re after. Sounds as if they were near 
the cabin.” 

He went forward briskly. They might 
have come about the cabin to see if they 
could find anything in the traps. One of 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 

them might even have tumbled into a 
turkey trap. They did not stop howling, 
but the howls grew more and more distinct 
as Jimmy advanced. 

“ They’re round the cabin, as sure 
as judgment,” he said, as he hurried 
along. ‘‘ Some fool trapper’s gone and 
jerked some meat up against the wall too 
high for them to reach it. Well, I’m not 
going to stay outside to favor all the wolves 
in Ohio.” 

He was within a hundred yards of the 
cabin. He knew it by the fallen maple 
that he clambered over, as he had done a 
hundred times. The wolves were certainly 
at the cabin. Between their howls he 
could hear them snarling amongst one 
another and scratching like dogs against the 
bark-covered walls of the hut. 

Suddenly he heard a shot. A sharp 
howl of rage answered it. 

There’s one gone,” he muttered. That 
69 


THE ARK OF 1803 


fool trapper’s tired of listening to ’em.” He 
mechanically fingered his own gun. 

He listened, expecting to hear another 
shot when the trapper had had time to 
reload, but there was none. The wolves 
were silent. 

“ Scared ’em away,” he thought, advan- 
cing cautiously from tree to tree. ^‘If only 
he don’t have the idea of shooting me, this 
is the time for me to get in.” 

He stopped again. A thrill of horror 
shot down his spine. He felt his hand lose 
its grip on the rifle. The wolves had 
broken out snarling and snapping, but the 
sound that sickened him was the cry of a 
man in deadly peril. Not a cry for help, 
since he could not know that there was 
help anywhere to hear. But simply the 
cry of a human animal at bay, and then the 
thick blows of the gun-butt on the heads 
of the attacking wolves. 

‘H’m coming!” shouted Jimmy, clutch- 
70 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 


ing his rifle, with more than his own 
strength returned to him. ^‘Hold hard 
there ! Em coming ! ” 

Even after he was close enough to get 
a sight on the black mass that snarled and 
fought together, he dared not shoot for 
fear of hitting the man he was trying to 
save. Then he made him out, a taller 
shadow than the rest, pinned against 
the wall of the cabin, holding off the 
wolves with the thick blows of his gun- 
butt. 

Aiming at the outer mass, Jimmy 
cocked his rifle and fired. Two of the 
grotesque shapes sprang high into the air 
and fell back dead. There was an imme- 
diate fight over the carcasses. 

Run round to the back, and push in 
the window!’’ cried Jimmy. “They’ll 
be at you again in a minute. Make haste.” 

“ Can’t move. Leg’s broken.” 

Jimmy gave a cry of dismay. 

71 


THE ARK OF 1803 


“ Fire into ’em/* said the man against 
the wall. 

Jimmy loaded quickly and fired again. 
As the third wolf fell the others drew 
away, dragging one of the carcasses with 
them. The man against the wall now sent 
a bullet after them and they broke into 
flight. 

‘‘Quick,” said Jimmy, “before they 
come back !” He ran to the man and put 
a shoulder under his arm. 

“ That’s my good leg,” said the man, 
dryly ; “ come the other side.” 

“Well, hurry,” said Jimmy. “Here’s 
the door. There ought to be a staple 
about here. Steady a minute. Land sakes, 
man, don’t faint yet. Wait till we’re in- 
side. So — careful of the sill. Don’t trip. 
You’re all right now. Drop down any- 
where. I must get the door fastened. You 
can’t strike a light.?” He fumbled hur- 
riedly with the staple and tongue inside the 
72 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 

door. Then he drew a breath of thank- 
fulness. 

‘‘ Queer/’ he said, controlling his excite- 
ment, ‘‘ we haven’t had any wolves here 
this winter. Did you bring them with you, 
sir?” 

But the stranger had fainted. 

Jimmy made a light and set a torch 
burning in a socket against the wall. Then 
he examined the stranger’s broken leg. 
Then he looked around the cabin. It was 
as bare of restoratives as an empty corn- 
field. 

He shook the stranger. “Wake up,” 
he said. “You’ve got to tell me what to 
do.” 

The man groaned, and finally opened 
his eyes and shivered. “Make a fire,” he 
said. 

It was an unwritten code that whoever 
used the cabin would leave wood for the 
next comer to start a fire with, and Jimmy 
73 


THE ARK OF 1803 


soon had a blaze crackling. Then, under 
the stranger’s direction, and with nothing 
more than a couple of splints torn from the 
bunks against the wall and some rags of elk- 
skin from the man’s coat, Jimmy bound 
up the broken leg. 

A sickly light was coming in at the 
little cabin window by the time this 
task was finished. The wolves had not 
been heard again, but as Jimmy pushed the 
door open and looked out, he saw that the 
carcasses of the three dead wolves had been 
dragged away, leaving only the bloody 
traces of their presence in the trampled 
snow. 

“I’ve a dead horse somewhere down by 
the branch,” the stranger said, “ and a few 
rations. I don’t know if you could find the 
place.” 

“ That’s all right,” said Jimmy. “ I’ve 
got some lye hominy hidden here, if no 
one’s discovered it.” 


74 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 


He pulled out the corn shucks that 
made a mattress for one of the bunks, 
lifted a plank and drew out a bag of corn. 
From the same recess he brought a long- 
handled spider. 

‘‘You’re mighty at home here,” the 
stranger commented. 

“ It’s the only home I’ve got,” said 
Jimmy, with sudden fierceness. “It’s 
mine.!’ 

The stranger looked at him curiously. 

“Well,” he said at last, “I’m mighty 
glad you happened along just when you did. 
I rode by here about sundown, and hailed, 
but there was no one here. Then my 
horse fell through a hole down by the 
branch and broke his neck and my leg, and 
it took me the balance of the night to 
crawl back here, only to get set on by 
those timber wolves. Law, they were 
famished.” 

“ What were you doing in this piece of 

75 


THE ARK OF 1803 

woods/’ Jimmy asked, ‘‘ so far off the 
roads? ” 

‘‘Just looking round for a chance to 
preempt land. Fm on my way down the 
river, really. The rest of my party are 
about fifty miles below, and Fd calculated 
to join ’em, but now I suppose Fm laid up 
here for weeks.” 

“It’s too bad,” said Jimmy. “I was 
going down the river — going down on a 
flatboat, you know, with the fresh. Marion 
Royce is getting his ark ready. I was 
going with him.” 

“And ain’t you goin’?” 

“No,” said Jimmy, “I ain’t going. 
Marion says he don’t trust me.” He won- 
dered at himself as he said it. 

The stranger was silent. Jimmy went 
out to get water, carrying his loaded gun 
in case the wolves came back. They did 
not show themselves, however, and he 
returned with water, his gun, and a turkey 

76 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 


frozen solid and covered with a light coat 
of snow. 

“ Found him in one of my traps,” he 
explained. 

The stranger, who had moved over 
with Jimmy’s help to one of the bunks, 
looked on at the preparations for breakfast 
with interest varied by twinges of excru- 
ciating pain. He was a small man, much 
bearded, with very blue eyes as sharp as 
gimlets. At Marietta Jimmy would have 
instinctively avoided him. But the fact 
that he had saved the man from a horrible 
death, and that the stranger was helpless 
with his broken leg, somehow discounted 
his intuitions, and he tried to keep him 
entertained so that he would forget his 
suffering. He told of the way he lived 
weeks at a time at the cabin, and trapped 
and dressed skins, and it was natural that in 
the course of his narrative he should mention 
Uncle Amasa, who so often shared his retreat. 
77 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘^Amasa?” exclaimed the stranger. 
“ Amasa Claiborne ? ” 

‘‘ That’s the one, — my grandfather.” 

The man ripped out an oath. ‘‘You 
don’t mean it,” he added hastily. “Why, 
I knew your grandpa, — why, let me see, it 
was all of twenty years ago, Tm thinking. 
Yes, that’s what it was. Do you think he 
will be coming here?” 

“ I’m afraid he won’t. He’s helping 
Marion Royce,” answered Jimmy. “There’s 
a lot to be done yet, and not enough hands 
at Marietta to work the mill.” 

“ I’m sorry to hear that,” said the 
stranger. “ I’d of liked to see him, I tell 
ye.” His voice expressed more relief than 
regret, but Jimmy was too busy to notice 
it. “ Then you’ll be James Claiborne’s 
son,” he added. “ I’ll be durned.” 

“Did you know my father?” asked 
Jimmy. 

“Know your father?” repeated the 
78 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 


stranger. ‘‘ Do I know the back of my 
hand? Your father and me was together 
no longer ago than last spring on the 
Natchez trace.” 

Jimmy wheeled round. ‘‘What!” he 
gasped. “ My father — living V 

“ If your father’s Jim Claiborne, son of 
old Unc. Amasa, he’s more alive than I 
came near being this night gone. What’s 
the matter with ye?” 

Jimmy looked squarely into the light 
blue eyes. “ Then why ain’t he come 
back ? ” 

“ Don’t ask me,” said the stranger. 
“ Mebby he’s not wanted. I guess your 
Uncle Amasa would know where to look 
if he was sot on it.” 

“Uncle Amasa is just pining to slip 
away and look for him,” said Jimmy. 

“ Is he going on the flatboat with that 
friend ofyour’n?” 

“ No, Marion thinks he’s too old,” said 

79 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Jimmy. ‘‘Besides, he has to stay and take 
care of Ma.’’ 

“Your friend seems to be full of preju- 
dices,’’ said the stranger, thoughtfully. 
“Now, here’s what I’ve got to say. You 
can take it or leave it, and welcome. 
You’ve done me a turn that I’ll not forget. 
No, I aint thankin’ ye. But if you want 
to look atter me a spell, till I’m on my 
legs again. I’ll do this. I’ll take you down 
the river till we meet up with my party 
and then we’ll join your pappy. Mebby 
about that time your friends’ boat will be 
getting down the stream, and ye’ll have the 
satisfaction of hailing them from Cincinnati, 
or one of the settlements along the way. 
I’m a stranger to ye, but you’ll have the 
liberty of making up your mind without 
any pesterin’ from me. Ye’re free to fol- 
low the dictates of your own heart. It’s 
but a small return for a man to make, 
whose been saved from what ye saved me 
8o 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 

from; and, besides, on the roads two’s safer 
than one.” 

The man with the broken leg had done 
some quick thinking. He had his own 
reasons for wishing to get down the river. 
With Jimmy to help and wait on him, he 
would be able to start much sooner than 
alone. And once among his friends, some 
convenient disposal of Jimmy would soon 
offer itself. He might even turn him over 
to his father. When the stranger said he 
knew James Claiborne, he spoke the entire 
and absolute truth. 

‘‘ I’d like to see my father, if it’s true,” 
said Jimmy, slowly. ‘‘ I’d go a good ways, 
and so would Uncle Amasa. I wish I 
could get word to him.” 

‘‘ And leave me to shift for myself the 
time it would take ye to go and come ?” 

“ I forgot,” said Jimmy, bent over the 
steaming hominy. 

The thing to do,” said the stranger, 

8i 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘‘ is this : If Uncle Amasa don’t get out 
here before we’re ready to leave, write him 
a message on the wall that you’ve gone to 
find your pappy ; then he’ll understand.” 

A smile flitted over the man’s face, the 
first that had shone on it. It was the 
smile that a revengeful and unscrupulous 
man might wear as he wiped out an old 
and bitter score. 

“ I might do that,” said Jimmy, who 
had not seen the smile. That’s a good 
idea. But most likely he’ll come.” 

Uncle Amasa was busy at the shipyard, 
however, and as fear helped on the rapid 
setting of the broken leg, the stranger was 
able to hobble about on rude crutches with- 
in ten days. 

Jimmy made a trip over to Marietta for 
him, and bought two horses, not without 
inward trepidation, for it was no light thing 
that he was venturing, even to find a father 
whom he had supposed dead. 

82 


JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 

“ Eve got my gun,” he reflected. 

Nothing can happen. As long as he’s 
crippled he’s my captive. I’m not his.” 
But even as he said it he knew that he was 
really captive to the man’s helplessness and 
dependence on him. 

His hand shook as he wrote in charcoal 
on the rough log of the mantelpiece, 

I hev gon after my fathur. 

-J. C.” 


83 


CHAPTER V 


UNCLE AMASA’s NEWS 



rush college was 

having its long de- 
^ ferred holiday. The 
f candy and raisins had 
come from Marietta, 
and all the young 
people of the settle- 


ment, as well as most of the older ones, 
had gathered to see the ark off, and cele- 
brate its departure with unusual festivities. 

Uncle Amasa was not there. He had 
gone to join Jimmy at their little cabin, a 
fortnight or so earlier, and had not yet 
returned. He was to bring Jimmy with 
him. Marion had consented to take him 
on the ark. 

Two bonfires gleamed ruddily on the 
creek bank, where a fiddle’s moving strains 


UNCLE AMASA^S NEWS 

rose and fell, blending to a chorus of joyous 
voices and much laughter. Just within the 
mouth of Fish Creek, where the swollen 
current of the Ohio ‘‘backs up the smaller 
stream, lay the ark of 1803, laden with 
everything which such craft carried, and 
ready to cast off in the morning. The 
crew of seventeen hardy fellows had come 
together, young frontiersmen, ready to 
brave all the perils and hardships of a voy- 
age of a hundred days, exposed every day of 
it to wreck and hostile bullet. New 
Orleans was farther away to these pioneer 
youths of Ohio than is Australia to us, and 
the voyage thither was subject to a hundred 
times greater perils. Yet every year an 
increasing number of these unwieldy arks 
made the long voyage, and the arksmen 
rendered a good account of themselves 
against all enemies by the way, and steer- 
ing warily past snag and shoal, made the 
wished-for port, shrewdly trafficked their 

85 


THE ARK OF 1803 


cargoes and, late in the year, got back to 
Ohio, Kentucky or Pennsylvania, with 
pockets well lined with Spanish gold, and 
packs replete with trinkets. 

For then, as now, the settlers’ wives, 
daughters and sweethearts longed for silk 
gowns and bonnets a la mode, laced ker- 
chiefs and jeweled combs ; and much hard 
work at the pioneer clearings unquestion- 
ably earned them. 

The Ohio was rising, steadily rising, 
much as it had risen every spring for thou- 
sands of years previously, much as it has 
risen for a hundred years since. Yet, how 
unlike the Ohio of the present day it was ! 

Only a few scattered clearings then 
notched the virgin forests that stretched 
along its banks from Cairo to Pittsburg. 
Cairo, in fact, did not then exist. Louis- 
ville and Cincinnati were but two pioneer 
hamlets, hardly known to each other. 

No steamboat had as yet made the 
86 


UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 


shores resound to its whistle ; no suspension 
bridges spanned the broad stream. Lurking 
parties of hostile Indians lay in ambush at 
the narrower reaches of the channel ; and, 
at certain points, still-more-to-be-dreaded 
bands of white outlaws had their haunts 
and lay in wait to rob the adventurous 
arks ” that floated down the river to seek 
their distant and only market at the French 
city of the Gulf. 

The river craft of those days were 
indeed picturesque, and characteristic, too, 
of Yankee skill and ingenuity. 

The ark, also called the broadhorn, 
often of seventy or eighty tons burden, a 
hundred feet in length, fifteen or sixteen 
feet of beam, was a great rude, home- 
hewn craft, usually decked, generally roofed 
over, and intended, as its name signified, to 
carry a little of everything. 

There was also the ‘‘ keel,” — a long, 
slim, graceful boat, of from fifteen to thirty 

87 


THE ARK OF 1803 


tons burden, steered by a rudder instead of 
the long “ sweep ’’ of the ark, and often 
propelled up-stream by oars and poles. 

And even when to these are added the 
barges, skiffs and ferry flats, but an inade- 
quate idea is gained of the number and 
variety of these craft ; for there were the 
horse-boats, having rude paddle-wheels pro- 
pelled by horse-power instead of steam, the 
cordelle-boats, the floating ‘‘ smithies,” or 
blacksmiths’ boats, the tinman’s boats, the 
floating grist mills, the traveling drygoods 
stores, that regularly plied up and down this 
great waterway, and lastly the brigs and 
ships, built at Marietta, that carried cargoes 
down to New Orleans and thence passed 
out to sea, bound for foreign ports. 

Rythmic waves from the turbid, mighty 
current, sweeping past the creek mouth, 
beat into it at intervals, causing the 
heavy ark to rock slowly at its moorings. 
Fitfully then could be heard the impatient 


UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 


trampling of horses beneath the rough slab 
roof forward ; a cow lowed for her calf, and 
turkeys and chickens ‘‘ quuttered’’ drowsily 
on their roosts. 

The fiddle was still going merrily ; yet 
all the while a sharp-eyed old hunter stood 
a little apart from the dancers, watchful as 
a sentinel in war time ; and within the ring 
of the firelight were stacked a dozen or 
more well-oiled flint-lock rifles, where they 
could be seized at a moment’s notice ; for 
an attack by the Indians was still among the 
possibilities of an evening gathering. 

There were other cares, however, and 
other hopes of a more personal nature; for 
ere long the tall young frontiersman whom 
the others called ‘‘ captain,” and who 
seemed to be the leading spirit of the 
gathering, drew apart from the others, per- 
haps to look to the hawsers that held the 
ark, for he approached and tried their 
tension. 


89 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Very soon, however, he was joined by 
the handsome girl with whom he had led 
the Virginia Reel, and standing in the 
flickering shadows of the great trees down 
the bank, Marion Royce and Milly Ayer 
conversed long and earnestly. 

The youthful arksman was a good type 
of that hardy generation of a century ago, 
that laid the foundation for the present 
greatness of the middle West. He was the 
offspring of pioneer stock from Virginia and 
New England, inured to labor, accustomed 
to danger, strong of arm, quick of eye, 
rough and ready in action, but manly and 
honest of heart. 

Not yet twenty-two, he had already 
made three voyages to New Orleans. The 
long and turbid river-way, with its thousand 
perils, had grown familiar to him. Not 
his courage alone, but his coolness in 
danger and his wary carefulness, day and 
night, had led his fellows to choose him 
90 


I 


f «• 


f 






» . 


•r* 


« 







“YOU WILL SURELY COME BACK THEN?’’ 


Page gi 


UNCLE AMASA^S NEWS 


leader and captain for this fourth voyage 
on which these pioneer families had staked 
so much. 

‘‘It will be a long summer,” said Milly, 
soberly. “We shall not hear from you, 
perhaps, in all that time. But by Septem- 
ber, Marion, — you will surely come back 
then?” 

“Perhaps, if all goes well,” replied he, 
gravely. “ But no one at home need fret if 
it is October or November. So many 
things may hold us back — head winds on 
the river, leaks, lending a hand with other 
boats ; and then the delays of making our 
market at New Orleans.” 

“And what if it is true that the Spanish 
governor will not let you land there?” 
Milly questioned. “The men on that 
Marietta keel that went up last night told 
father so. They said the dons had mounted a 
twelve-gun battery on the levee and would 
sink the first Yankee boat that comes down.” 


91 


THE ARK OF 1803 


That may not be true,” replied Marion, 
doubtfully. “ But let them try that if they 
dare. New Orleans is the front door of 
this whole great country, and woe be to 
those who try shut it in our faces.” 

But, if there is fighting, do try to keep 
out of it, Marion ! ” exclaimed the girl. 

‘‘The fighting would be short,” said the 
young man. “ Don’t you worry about 
that, Milly. They do say Thomas Jeffer- 
son is figuring to buy up that whole country 
down there and send the Spaniards home.” 

“ But, father says that savage man, 
Napoleon Bonaparte, means to seize this 
whole country up the Mississippi for France. 
Father says that a French fleet may be at 
New Orleans before you get down there, 
and that’s the real reason,” Milly continued, 
lowering her voice, “why father wouldn’t 
send Jerry with the other horses. He is 
afraid you will lose them all. And Aunt 
Betty Lord is only sending half her winter’s 
92 


UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 


spinning of yarn — she’s so afraid the French 
will get it ! ” 

Marion laughed. ‘‘There’s cargo 
enough without Aunt Betty’s yarn,” said 
he. “ We’ve never sent so much before, 
even though we don’t carry those twenty 
barrels of Claiborne peach brandy and 
whisky. I’m worried about Uncle Amasa. 
He ought to have been back. I’d hate to 
have to go without Jimmy, now that every- 
thing’s straightened out.” 

“What did Master Hempstead tell you, 
Marion ?” 

For she knew that the schoolmaster 
had had a long talk with the young captain 
on the day following the fire. 

“Why,” said Marion, “he said that he 
was on his way to take toll of the peach 
brandy fn the shed, when he saw that the 
shed was on fire, and he heard the hoofs of 
a horse being ridden away at a gallop. 
Then Jimmy Claiborne came along and 
93 


THE ARK OF 1803 


accused him of trying to steal their whisky, 
and they began fighting. When the master 
fell, Jimmy ran away, probably afraid that 
he'd killed him. Then, probably, he saw 
from the woods that the fire was destroying 
everything, and he came back to help. 

“ Master Hempstead said he expected to 
be discharged. He felt more humiliated at 
having been a disgrace to a noble profession 
than from any personal loss of dignity." 

‘‘ And you persuaded the Committee to 
keep him ? Oh, Marion, I know you did. 
It is just like you," said Milly. 

The captain laughed. ‘‘ Where do you 
think we would find another Oxford grad- 
uate to teach in this wilderness? Would 
you like to know the quaint way in which 
he vindicated himself? He quoted from 
Sophocles: ‘He who surpasses his fellow 
citizens in wisdom is no longer a member 
of the city. Its laws are not for him, since 
he is a law unto himself.’ " 


\ 


94 


UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 


Milly laughed. “ And, meanwhile, the 
mystery of who set the fire remains a 
mystery? ” 

‘‘It remains a mystery, — look yonder, 
Milly!” he exclaimed. “ If that isn’t Uncle 
Amasa 1 and he’s alone ! ” 

They ran back to the scene of the 
merrymaking. The dancers had stopped, 
and were clustering three deep around the 
old pioneer. As Milly and Marion joined 
the crowd the fiddles were silenced by a 
lifted hand. 

“Jimmy’s gone!” whispered the listen- 
ers, looking at one another with awed 
faces. “Gone — no one knows where. Uncle 
Amasa’s spent all this time searching among 
the settlements. He found where Jimmy 
had passed through on horseback, with 
another man, but he never caught up with 
them, and he’s given up hope. Jimmy 
left a word on the wall of the cabin saying 
that he’d gone to find his father 
95 


THE ARK OF 1803 


As this message passed among the settlers, 
their faces grew sober in the firelight. 
There was not a soul among them but 
believed that Jimmy’s father had been killed 
by the Indians, and the message sounded 
like an ill omen. Gravely, almost solemnly, 
the party broke up. 

Don’t worry. Uncle Amasa,” said 
Marion, moving away with the old man. 
‘‘Jimmy can take care of himself. He’s 
made for the wilderness. He’ll come 
back, or we may pick him up in some town 
along the way. He is in no danger that you 
haven’t been in and come out of— remember 
that.” 

“ I know,” said Uncle Amasa. “ I 
know; but I’d ruther he had taken his 
chances along with ye, and seen some of 
the doin’s down to New Orleans. It would 
have been a sight safer. There’s been 
treachery in this, Marion ; there’s been 
treachery, or the boy wouldn’t have written 
96 


UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 


that message. It’s uncanny. The lad is 
being led to his death.” 

‘‘ No such thing,” said Marion, stoutly. 
But his heart misgave him, and he deter- 
mined to watch closely, as he went down 
the river, for the runaway. 

Daybreak saw the clumsy craft with its 
heterogeneous cargo float slowly forth from 
the shadows of the creek mouth to the tune 
of a mighty creaking of its great sweeps, 
till it was caught by the river current out- 
side, and the long trip of two thousand 
miles began. 

With the river running five or six miles 
an hour, it would seem that a hundred 
miles a day might be made ; but snags and 
shifting mud banks rendered it hazardous 
to float by night, save when the moon was 
full. Slack water, too, at the numerous 
bends, and the necessity of frequently cross- 
ing over to avoid islands and rafts of drift, 
97 


THE ARK OF 1803 


consumed much time, so that often twenty 
miles in a day was as much as could be accom- 
plished with a due regard for safety. 

They tied up the first night in a creek 
mouth on the Virginia bank, fifteen miles 
below Blennerhassett’s Island, having spent 
an hour there, viewing the mansion and the 
flower gardens. 

For this beautiful island, so sadly associ- 
ated with the early history of the Ohio, 
was then in the heyday of its prosperity. 
Harman Blennerhassett and his accom- 
plished wife had come there five years 
previously, and wonderful accounts of their 
luxurious home, their wealth and culture 
had spread up and down the two great 
rivers, from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. 

The ark made good progress during the 
next day and the day following. By three 
o’clock of this third afternoon it reached 
Letart’s ‘‘ Falls.” Here the sweeps were 
double-manned, and the boat was about to 
98 


UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 


run down this bit of quick water when the 
sudden onset of a thunder-squall led Marion 
Royce to countermand his order, and pole 
the ark to the shelter of the trees on an 
island just above the rapids. 

The delay bade fair to be brief, but it 
was fraught with grave consequences. 
While lying-by there, waiting for the gust 
of rain to spend itself, Shadwell Lincoln 
espied a new barge on rough timber ways, 
masked by cedar shrubbery, upon the Vir- 
ginia side of the river. The wind and rain, 
waving the cedar aside, gave them glimpses 
of it, otherwise it would have escaped 
notice. 

They hailed it, but received no answer. 
Moses Ayer then fired his rifle to attract 
the attention of those ashore. At the report 
a flock of buzzards rose from close by the 
barge. 

That’s queer,” said Lewis Hoyt. 

Let’s have a look at that barge, Cap’n.” 

IL.oFC. 


99 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Marion nodded. Lewis and Moses Ayer 
climbed into the small skiff, which the ark 
towed astern, and pulled into the bank, dis- 
tant no more than a hundred yards. Land- 
ing a little above the barge, they pushed 
through a tangled thicket of cedar and 
wild grape-vines, and disappeared from 
view ; but Moses soon came off again 
in haste. 

‘‘ ’Tis a new fifty-foot barge,” he 
exclaimed, ‘‘ and four men have been at 
work on her — but they will never do any 
more work ! ” 

“Why not?” said the captain. 

“ ’Cause they’re dead and scalped ! ” 
replied the boy, his dark young eyes dilat- 
ing with suppressed excitement. 

“ Redskins ! ” muttered several of the 
crew. 

“ But, how long ago ? ” questioned 
Marion. 

“Just done! ” cried Moses. 


lOO 


UNCLE AM ASA’S NEWS 


Captain Royce cast a hasty glance along- 
shore, and then toward the thick trees of 
the island, in the shadow of which they 
were lying. 

‘‘ Are you sure ? The rain would freshen 
the signs,” he said. ‘‘Are you very sure — 
and why did not Lewis come off with you ?” 

“ He’s watching ! ” exclaimed Mose. 
“ He said he would watch while I came 
off to tell you. There’s a path leads back 
from the barge to three cabins and a clear- 
ing. We smelled smoke from the cabins. 
Lewis said he would watch them.” 

“ But if redskins are about they heard 
you fire,” said Marion. “Stand by, to pole 
off, men.” 

Then, after another searching glance 
alongshore, he jumped into the skiff him- 
self and rowed hurriedly to the shore to 
fetch Lewis aboard. He knew Indians 
well, and feared that they were lying in 
wait to capture the ark. 


lOI 


THE ARK OF 1803 


As the skiff touched the bank he 
whistled twice, the signal for calling a man 
ashore. Apparently Lewis did not hear. 
After waiting a minute or two, Captain 
Royce landed cautiously, to see for himself 
how recently the attack had been made, 
but had scarcely forced his way through 
the cedar to the little yard of chips and 
hewings about the barge, when he heard a 
shot close at hand, and thought also that he 
heard Lewis running. 

The echoes of the shot had hardly 
ceased from the wooded side of the oppo- 
site island, however, when a volley appeared 
to be fired over there, and was followed by 
the peculiar quavering yell of the Shawnees ! 

A skulking war party had surprised the 
unfortunate builders of the barge. Beyond 
doubt, too, the Indians had seen the ark 
crossing over, and all through the shower 
had been lying in wait in the woods on the 
island. 


102 


UNCLE AMASA^S NEWS 


Caught at such a disadvantage, Marion 
Royce justified his reputation for coolness 
in danger and good judgment. His first 
anxiety was for his ark and crew. Bound- 
ing through the cedar and vines, he hailed 
the startled crew, calling sharply to them 
to shove off instantly and not wait for him. 

You, Merrick, Lincoln, Gist, shove 
off! Get her into the current ! he shouted. 
“I’ll catch you in the skiff! Shove off!” 

The Indians were firing shot after shot; 
and five or six of the savages, hideously 
painted, dashed out from the bank through 
the shallows, to board the ark. Gist fell 
overboard, shot while pushing hard with his 
pole. Merrick was also slightly wounded. 
But the boat was off, and immediately the 
strong current that made round the foot of 
the island bore the heavy craft away and 
into the rapids below. 

As soon as they were afloat the arksmen 
dropped to cover behind the thick planks 
103 


THE ARK OF 1803 


of the rail, and crawling to the gun-room 
amidships, secured their rifles. Moses Ayer 
and Shadwell Lincoln stood by the sweeps 
to keep her head with the stream. 

The ark was now out of danger of cap- 
ture ; and, observing this, her plucky young 
captain took thought for his own safety and 
that of Lewis Hoyt. Twice he shouted to 
the boy, but the only answer was several 
rifle bullets from the redskins on the island. 
Three canoes put out, noticing which, 
Marion was constrained to ply his oars to 
escape down the rapids. By dint of vigor- 
ous exertion he overtook the ark two miles 
below. It was not till he had got on board 
that he learned of the loss of Gist, whom 
none of the crew expected ever to see 
again. 

Lewis was running down the Virginia 
shore, keeping the ark in sight. The boy 
hailed them from the bank about a mile 
below, and was taken aboard in the skiff. 

104 


UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 


He had been fired at, but was unhurt. 
Gist, they had little doubt, had been killed 
or was drowned. 

In a profound gloom for his loss, the 
arksmen continued their voyage. 

What they did not know, and could not 
guess, was that they left behind them 
another member of the crew. 

Jimmy Claiborne had been floating 
down the river in a canoe, waiting to be 
picked up by the ark, when he had been 
captured by these same Shawnees. 


105 


CHAPTER VI 


A DANGEROUS ‘‘ GOBBLER ” 

HE adventure of Louis 
Gist was indeed a singu- 
lar one. He had set his 
pole in the sandy bottom 
to help push the ark off, 
and he and Merrick and 
Kenton were pushing 
hard together when a 
bullet from one of their 
Indian assailants ashore broke the set- 
ting-pole between his hands, and, pene- 
trating his deerskin jacket, struck a rib, 
which it also broke. But the lead was 
deflected, and passing half round his body 
beneath the skin, lodged there as a little 
blue lump against a rib on the other side ! 

The breaking of the pole and the shock 
caused him to pitch overboard ; and, as he 
io6 



A DANGEROUS ‘‘GOBBLER 


was but an indifferent swimmer, he would 
probably have drowned then and there had it 
not been for a strong eddy of the current 
at the foot of Letart’s Island. This eddy 
swept him round with it like a bit of 
flotsam, and lodged him in shallower 
water, amid clots of foam and driftwood. 

Here his knees touched bottom and he 
got his head up. He thought himself 
mortally wounded, for the shock of the 
bullet directly over his heart had been 
heavy. Moreover, he was in great pain 
and bleeding considerably, and in this pre- 
dicament he seemed partially or wholly to 
have lost consciousness. 

When at length he came to himself, he 
had a confused impression that there had 
been a terrible battle, that the ark had been 
taken, and all his late companions killed. 

By this time it had grown dusk, and he 
heard, or thought that he heard, the Indians 
on the other side of the island. The ark 


THE ARK OF 1803 


had already passed down the rapids and was 
out of sight ; but Gist fancied that the red- 
skins had towed it round to the Virginia 
side of the island. 

After awhile he crawled out to the 
water on the Ohio side of the island, and 
made his way through the brushwood up to 
the head of it. Here he lay all night, in 
great misery ; but early the next morning 
he saw a skiff with four men coming down 
the river, and was able to attract their 
attention. 

They took him with them as far as the 
settlement at the mouth of the Scioto, 
where a pioneer surgeon laid open the little 
blue lump on his rib with a hunting-knife, 
and extracted the Indian bullet. 

Three or four weeks later he was able 
to work his passage back up the river on a 
Wheeling flatboat, and told the people at 
home that the ark was captured by the 
Indians, and that to the best of his knowl- 
io8 


A DANGEROUS « GOBBLER 


edge and belief, he, of all her crew, was 
the sole survivor. 

Such endings of the early efforts of 
commerce and travel on the Ohio were of 
too frequent occurrence to render the tale 
incredible; and, although some had their 
doubts, most of the settlers believed that 
Gist’s account was but too likely to be true. 

Thus far no such overwhelming disaster 
had befallen the little pioneer settlement at 
Fish Creek. 

In very truth there were sorrow and 
mourning at every cabin, and especially in 
those of the Royce and Ayer families. To 
Milly Ayer and Mary Royce the year 1803 
bade fair to be the saddest of their young 
lives. 

But the stout ark all the while was float- 
ing bravely on — past the mouth of the 
Kanawha, where, in 1749, the ambitious 
Celeron buried his leaden plates, asserting 
the claim of France to the entire Ohio 
109 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Valley ; past Point Pleasant, where, in 1774, 
General Lewis and his rangers fought a 
fierce, indecisive battle all day with the 
famous Shawnee chief. Cornstalk, and his 
braves; past the mouth of the Big Sandy, 
near which a gigantic railroad bridge now 
spans the broad river ; past the Scioto mouth, 
where Portsmouth, Ohio, then showed only 
a few scattered cabins; and so onward till, 
after nine days, they had come to that little 
town on the beautiful bluffs now known the 
world over as Cincinnati. 

Cincinnati is said to have been chris- 
tened Losantiville, in 1788, by the first 
schoolmaster of that region, one John 
Filson, whom the Indians subsequently 
scalped. From the depths of his classical 
erudition Filson manufactured the name to 
fit the location, namely: L for Licking 
River, os for mouth of the same, anti for 
opposite, and ville for town — The-town- 
opposite-the-mouth-of-the-Licking. 

1 10 


A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER 


It was customary for arks’ crews to have 
a “ liberty day ” at the embryo metropolis, 
but on this occasion Marion Royce dissuaded 
his fellows from stopping there longer than 
was neccessary to make sure that there was 
no trace in the town of Jimmy Claiborne. 
They tied up for the night to the Kentucky 
bank, a little below where Covington now 
stands, and the next day floated down 
to the mouth of Big Bone Creek. 

The Ohio was still rising, the current 
waxing stronger and more rapid each day. 
Thus far the ark had tied up only by night, 
but her young captain had a particular 
reason for stopping at this point. 

During his previous visits to New 
Orleans Marion had met many odd char- 
acters along the levees, among others a 
certain French doctor and savant, named 
Buchat, who was vastly interested in the 
natural history of the New World, and 
after an odd fashion of his own was inces- 


III 


THE ARK OF 1803 


santly questioning the hunters and boatmen 
who came down the great river. The latter 
generally considered him crack-brained ; 
but Marion understood him better, and 
liked the vivacious old gentleman. 

Dr. Buchat had heard of the huge 
skeletons of mastodons (then called mam- 
moths) which had been found by the settlers 
in the Ohio Valley, and was very curious 
concerning the localities where they were 
discovered. Marion Royce, who had once 
ascended Big Bone Creek for game, gave 
the old Frenchman such information as he 
was able concerning the size of the thigh- 
bones, vertebras and skulls which he had 
seen in the basin of the Lick. 

Marion’s account so fired the enthusiasm 
of the collector that he offered the young 
man a thousand francs if he would unearth 
a skeleton of one of these huge creatures 
and fetch it down the river on his next 
trip. 


1 12 


A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER’’ 

A thousand francs — about two hundred 
dollars — was a sum not to be despised in 
those days of small means, especially by a 
young pioneer who was contemplating a 
home of his own in the near future. Marion 
had determined to win this, if it could be 
done without jeopardy to the ark and 
cargo. 

Big Bone Creek is but a very small 
affluent of the Ohio, little more than a 
brook, in fact. It enters from the Ken- 
tucky shore through a fringe of willows, 
between low, sugar-loaf hills, then densely 
wooded by lofty sycamore and walnut. At 
low water boats could ascend this creek ; 
but now the rising current set back into the 
mouth of it for a distance of fully two 
miles. 

Wood wise and wary, the young ark’s 
captain tied up to the Kentucky shore, two 
miles above the creek mouth, and sent 
Kenton round about through the woods to 

113 


THE ARK OF 1803 


reconnoiter the lick. For, as it was a place 
frequented by deer and elk, it had come 
also to be a place of ambush for the stealthy 
redskins. 

Kenton came upon the ashes of a camp- 
fire, two or three days old, on one of the 
hills overlooking the lick, and concluded 
that Indians had recently been watching 
there. The presence of a large herd of 
deer about the springs, however, convinced 
him that they had gone away. 

Very early the next morning, therefore, 
the ark dropped down to the creek mouth 
and was poled up through the slack water 
for a distance of nearly two miles. But to 
guard against surprise, it was moored out 
in the stream, instead of being tied to the 
bank, by driving down three setting-poles, 
so as to give forty feet of open water all 
around it. 

Shadwell Lincoln, with seven of the 
crew, including young Moses Ayer and 
114 


A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER*’ 


Lewis Hoyt, was left in charge. Marion 
himself, with the others, set off for the lick, 
provided with axes and a shovel. From 
where the ark lay they had not far from 
two miles to go, through the forest and 
over hills. 

Big Bone Creek is peculiar in that it 
comes almost wholly from five or six 
copious sulphur and saline springs, which 
issue from the earth in the marshy basin 
above mentioned. 

When the first white hunters came here 
in 1729 the whole marsh bristled with 
enormous white bones — hence the name. 
Naturalists and collectors have now carried 
off everything in sight; but those who 
have patience to excavate the marsh are able 
occasionally to unearth bones of amazing 
magnitude. 

In 1803, however, it was still possible 
to find partly buried skeletons intact, or 
nearly so. Marion Royce and his arksmen 

115 


THE ARK OF 1803 


had not long to search for one, and were 
soon busy at their strange task. 

The Royce and Ayer family traditions 
have it that the arksmen dug out a huge 
mammoth skeleton here, and were occupied 
until May 3 hauling it down to the ark 
on bob-sleds, which they constructed for 
the purpose. Many of the great molar 
teeth and numbers of the small bones were 
missing from this and all other skeletons 
found here ; but, by overhauling several 
different skeletons, they were able to make 
up these deficiencies in part. 

Like the deer, elk and buffalo, the 
mastodon was a constitutionally salt-hungry 
herbivore. Great numbers of them, ventur- 
ing into the soft marsh about these saline 
springs, were ‘‘mired” and perished miser- 
ably, either from hunger or the attacks of 
the carnivora. 

For centuries the numerous “licks” of 
this Western wilderness were veritable death 
116 


A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER” 


traps for the larger game. Not only were 
the heavy buffalo and heavier mastodon 
bogged in the treacherous salt sloughs, but 
the deer and elk were constantly preyed on 
by panthers, wolves, and Indian hunters 
that had learned to ambush these localities. 

The mouth of the Big Bone was now 
near to being a trap for the ark. An im- 
mense raft of driftwood had set into it from 
the rising current of the Ohio outside. For 
a mile below where the ark lay the creek 
was filled by it, and so dense was the pack 
that it became a question whether the crew 
would be able to force a passage through it 
to the open river. 

Otherwise, that part of the crew left 
aboard were passing dull days, particularly 
the two boys, Moses and Lewis ; for Cap- 
tain Royce had left strict orders with 
Shadwell Lincoln that while he was absent 
at the lick the men must remain closely 
aboard, and be constantly on guard against 
117 


THE ARK OF 1803 


a surprise by Indian war parties, a precaution 
necessary from the exposed position of the 
ark in the narrow creek. 

But the weather had now turned warm, 
and the lagoon, overhung by great trees, 
was like a hothouse. A flock of buzzards 
hung about them, often alighting among 
the poultry on the roof of the ark. Hawks 
and a pair of eagles also troubled them, and 
by night a large owl paid them visits. 

Moses and Lewis longed to go ashore 
and hunt, but true to his orders Lincoln 
would not allow it. A little sport offered, 
shooting turkey-gobblers, numbers of which, 
allured by the plaintive “yeapings” of the 
turkeys aboard the ark, appeared on the 
creek bank. One ambitious young gobbler 
flew out to them of his own accord, and 
began ‘‘ strutting ” on the roof. 

The morning before the captain and his 
party returned with their sled-loads of 
bones a more exciting incident occurred, 

ii8 


A DANGEROUS ‘‘GOBBLER’* 

which well illustrates the perils that beset 
the daily life of the pioneers. 

A little after daybreak, while still most 
of the crew were asleep, another turkey- 
cock was heard gobbling in the woods a 
little way back from the creek bank. First 
Moses, then Lewis, rifle in hand, sat watch- 
ing behind the plank bulwarks. There 
was rivalry between them as to which 
should first catch sight of these wild 
visitors. 

For some time they heard the bird 
gobbling at intervals of a few minutes ; but 
this particular turkey-cock appeared to be 
wary and disinclined to show himself. 

Then, at length, Moses noted an odd 
circumstance, and drew suddenly down to 
cover of the planking. 

“Layup, Lew!” said he. “I believe 
that’s a redskin 1 ” 

Gobbling like a turkey in the woods, to 
lure the white settlers near enough for a 
119 


THE ARK OF 1803 


shot, was a common stratagem with the 
Indians in those days — one that cost more 
than one pioneer his scalp. Some of the 
savages were adepts at imitating all the 
notes of the wild turkey, from the plaintive 
yeap-yeap, yop-yop of the hens, to the 
noisy, defiant gobble of the big, bronze- 
breasted, red-wattled turkey-cocks. 

The human ear could detect nothing 
wrong with this call ; perhaps the ear of a 
turkey is keener, for what Moses Ayer had 
noted was that their own turkeys were not 
responding as usual to this early caller. 

But Lewis believed it was a turkey, so 
many had come out in sight there. The 
two boys argued it for some time, and 
meantime the gobbling continued at inter- 
vals, apparently about a gun-shot back from 
the creek. 

Not only Charles Hoyt, but Merrick 
and Wistar Royce, Marion’s brother, who 
had now appeared from their bunks. 


120 


A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER’* 


thought that it was probably a turkey.. 
Lewis declared that he would go ashore to 
shoot it, but Lincoln forbade it, although 
he, too, believed it to be a bird. 

Moses still insisted that it was a skulk- 
ing Indian trying to pick up a scalp, and 
the discussion and banter waxed so hot at 
length that the boy determined, privately, 
to prove himself in the right. 

He seemed to retire to his bunk, as if 
for another nap, but made his way astern, 
past the horses. Here he let out the painter 
line that held the skiff sufficiently to allow 
him to reach the bank in it, and then, 
watching his chance, while the others were 
washing up and preparing breakfast, effected 
a landing unobserved, but on the bank oppo- 
site where he had heard the turkey gobble. 

Concealing himself in the laurel boughs, 
he carefully reprimed his rifle and lay quiet 
till he had heard the turkey again. There- 
upon, feeling tolerably certain that the 


I2I 


THE ARK OF 1803 

Indian — if it were one — had not seen him 
land, he made a wide detour through the 
forest and crossed the creek at a point 
where the stream was shallow, half a mile 
above where the ark lay. From here he 
worked his way cautiously down the other 
bank, crawling from one thicket to another, 
with a stealth which even an Indian might 
have envied. 

But now the youthful woodsman was at 
a disadvantage. The ‘‘gobbling'’ of the 
suppositious turkey-cock had ceased. With 
that to guide him he could easily have 
located the “gobbler.” For the first time 
he felt afraid. Either the Indian had 
sighted him, and was waiting for him to 
come nearer, or else had grown tired of the 
effort and gone away. 

For half an hour or more the boy lay 
still in the brush, watching and listening, 
not daring to stir a twig. He was already 
within two hundred yards of where the ark 


122 


A DANGEROUS ‘‘GOBBLER 


lay, but young cane, vines and other brush 
made thick cover all along the bank. 

Fortune favored him at length, other- 
wise he would not have dared to make 
another move. Down the bank, almost 
opposite the ark, a pair of redbirds suddenly 
began making a fuss, as they do when their 
nests are disturbed ; a catbird also uttered 
its low, squalling note. Some enemy was 
disturbing the birds there, and with a good 
notion that it might be the Indian, Moses 
now crept slowly nearer. 

All the while he could hear plainly the 
voices of the men on the ark and smell the 
smoke of their morning pipes. Lewis and 
Charles Hoyt were talking and laughing. 
He heard the latter say that he — Moses — 
had got the sulks and gone to his bunk ! 

The redbirds continued scolding. He 
could see them flying about over a laurel 
clump, and crawling still nearer, he pres- 
ently detected a slight movement of the 
123 


THE ARK OF 1803 


canes near an old heap of driftwood, within 
a few yards of the creek water and not 
more than a hundred feet distant. Keeping 
his eyes fixed on the spot, he presently saw 
a feathered scalp-lock rise slowly there — 
for a peep at the ark ! 

The sight sent a curious thrill along the 
boy's nerves, and for some moments he lay 
very quiet. Then, plucking up his courage, 
he looked yet again to his priming and 
crawled a little nearer. He could see the 
Indian more clearly now, and distinguished 
his ear, shoulder and tawny right arm, with 
its dull brass armlet. Eager, but silent as a 
crouching panther, the Indian was watching 
the ark and listening to the voices of the 
men. 

Moses, too, could discern as well as 
hear them, and it made his heart beat 
quickly to see Charles Hoyt walk uncon- 
cernedly aft, his head and shoulders fully 
exposed above the planking of the bulwarks ; 

124 


A DANGEROUS ‘^GOBBLER 


for he knew now that the lurking savage, 
unable to lure any of the arksmen ashore, 
had crawled down to the bank with the 
intention of shooting at least one of the 
whites, then making his escape. 

‘‘ Come, help water the horses ! ” he 
heard Hoyt call out; and then Lewis and 
Merrick lounged aft, an easy mark for the 
concealed savage, who was hardly more 
than twenty yards away. 

This feeling of suspense and apprehen- 
sion for his companions changed to some- 
thing akin to horror when he saw Wistar 
Royce swing himself up by a stanchion to 
the roof of the ark and move about, feeding 
and watering the poultry in their cages up 
there. Surely the Indian could not hope 
for a fairer mark ! 

Apparently the latter thought so him- 
self, for the boy saw him raise the long 
barrel of a rifle into view and slide it 
slowly across a log of the drift heap. 

125 


THE ARK OF 1803 


For some seconds Moses had been hold- 
ing his own rifle in readiness to shoot. It 
was his first experience stalking an Indian, 
however, and he felt not a little afraid. If 
he missed his aim, the redskin would no 
doubt return the shot on the instant, or 
else rush upon him with knife and toma- 
hawk before he could reload. 

But the sight of the savage making 
ready to fire at Wistar served to renew his 
courage, and he cautiously cocked his rifle. 

At so little a distance, however, the 
savage heard the click of the hammer. He 
glanced suddenly in Moses' direction. Their 
eyes met as the boy fired. Through the 
smoke he saw the Indian leap to his feet 
with a frightful whoop, and dropping his 
own empty rifle, he darted back through 
the underbrush to escape. But he immedi- 
ately perceived that the savage was down, 
writhing about and making distressful 
sounds. But even these movements wholly 
126 


A DANGEROUS ‘‘GOBBLER” 


ceased before Moses had his rifle reloaded, 
for his bullet had entered near the Indian’s 
righ armpit and passed completely through 
his body. 

Meanwhile the shot had produced a 
considerable commotion on the ark. The 
crew seized their guns to repel an attack. 
Moses’ absence was immediately discovered, 
however, and seeing the skiflF at the other 
bank, the men at once concluded that he 
had gone ashore to shoot the turkey. Shad- 
well Lincoln hailed him by name, and 
fearing lest the arksmen might fire on him in 
the brush, Moses was constrained to answer. 

“Come aboard, you young scamp!” 
shouted Lincoln. Bidding Wistar and 
Lewis haul the skiff round, he went ashore 
after Moses himself, being minded to give 
the boy a “wigging” for disobeying orders. 
“ Come aboard, you scamp I ” he shouted 
again. “ Did you not hear me tell you not 
to go ashore after that gobbler?” 

127 


THE ARK OF 1803 


But Moses, who had by this time 
possessed himself of the Indian’s rifle, knife 
and feather-bedecked head-dress, stepped 
proudly out of the brush in full view of 
them all, and holding up his trophies, said, 
‘‘ Here’s your turkey-gobbler! ” 



Page 128 


t 



CHAPTER VII 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 



.N the same morning that 
Moses Ayer shot the 
‘‘gobbler/’ Marion Royce 
and his men came down 
from Big Bone Lick with 
their four sled loads of 
mammoth bones. The ark, how- 
ever, was blockaded for a week by 
the dense pack or raft of drift-wood, which 
had set back from the Ohio into the creek 
mouth. 

As long as the river continued to rise, 
the drift pack was forced back into the 
slack water with an increasing pressure 
which defied the efforts of the crew to open 
a passage through it. On the eighth night, 
however, the “ fresh,” as rivermen term 
rising water, slackened and fell a few inches, 
129 


THE ARK OF 1803 


when immediately, as from a magic touch, 
the densely jammed pack loosened and 
began floating out into the river. 

By dint of poling hard the men got out 
of the Big Bone early on the morning of 
the ninth day, and resumed their voyage. 
That afternoon they passed Vevay, where 
newly arrived Swiss settlers were beginning 
to erect log houses and clear land for vine- 
yards. 

A bright moon enabled them to go on 
that evening, and early in the night they 
passed the mouth of the Kentucky. By 
the next noon Sand Island was sighted, and 
here Captain Royce tied up to take a look 
at the rapid water ahead ; for the ark had 
reached the ‘‘ Falls of the Ohio,” now made 
easy for ascending steamers by the canal. 

La Salle, the famous early explorer of 
Western rivers, is said to have been here in 
1669, and tradition tells of various eflForts 
to maintain forts and found a settlement 
130 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 

here during the tumultuous eighteenth 
century warfare. In May of 1778, George 
Rogers Clark was here and built a log 
blockhouse on Corn Island, in the midst of 
the rapids. But even as late as 1803 only a 
few scattered houses could be discerned 
alongshore from the river. 

The falls here are the only real obstruc- 
tion to navigation on the Ohio, and like 
most of the so-called “falls” of Western 
rivers, are more formidable in name 
than in reality. At low water the rapids 
are dangerous to inexperienced boatmen, 
but when the Ohio is in flood, hardly a 
ripple breaks the swift current. 

After a cautious look ahead. Captain 
Royce double-manned the sweeps and ran 
the quick water without other incident 
than an acceleration of the ark’s progress. 

The life of an arksman floating down 
the Ohio and Mississippi was an easy one 
when all went well, yet subject hourly to 

131 


THE ARK OF 1803 


most perilous contingencies. Beyond man- 
ning the sweeps, the crew had little to do, 
save to prepare their food and care for their 
live stock. 

During the first six days after passing 
the falls the ark made unusually good prog- 
ress, the moonlight enabling Captain 
Royce to continue during at least a part of 
four of the nights. They passed the then 
uncleared site of Evansville and of Hender- 
son, not yet the home of the naturalist, 
Audubon, and threading the great ox- 
bows ” of the river, came where the 
mighty Wabash, flowing down past old 
Vincennes, poured its grand stream of clear, 
green water out across the roily Ohio. 

On the last of these nights, Moses was 
standing at the great steering oar, his gaze 
fixed curiously on the high bluffs beside 
which the ark was passing. Somewhere at 
the bow he supposed that Lewis was swing- 
ing his feet and thinking pretty much the 
132 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


same thoughts as Moses himself. The 
great boat with all its freight was wrapped 
in utter silence. Hours ago, it seemed to 
Mose, the cocks had awakened the echoes 
of the shore with their drowsy ‘‘oo — oo — 

oo OO,” and tucked their heads under 

their wings again. 

‘‘These must be the palisades Marion 
talked about,” Mose reflected. Marion had 
told him to call him if they were reached 
before daybreak, for it would mean that 
they were passing along the Illinois shore, 
through the region of the cave robbers. 

The high limestone cliffs were gray in the 
moonlight, but here and there Moses saw 
deep black fissures, the entrances of caves. 
Remembering his orders, he called to Lewis. 

“ Lew ! Oh Lew ! Ahoy the bow ! ” 

There was no answer. 

“Must have dropped asleep,” Moses 
said to himself. He put his fingers into 
his mouth and whistled shrilly. 

133 


THE ARK OF 1803 


In a moment half a dozen men had 
come running to the deck. 

‘‘What’s happened? What’s the 
matter? Where’s Lewis?” they asked. 

“Asleep, I guess,” said Mose. “ Here’s 
the cliffs, Cap’n.” 

Marion Royce looked uneasily at the 
peaceful face of the moonlit palisades. As 
the ark floated past, close in shore, the 
crew stood at the starboard rail, speculating 
as to the extent of the caverns. Suddenly 
a voice called from the water behind them, 
and they saw an arm upraised. 

“ It’s Lewis ! ” exclaimed Marion. 
“ Throw a line out, Kenton ! ” 

Lewis caught the line without trouble 
and the men soon had him aboard, dripping 
and excited. 

“ Bad stretch of water to bathe in, 
Lewis,” said the captain, gravely. 

“ I didn’t mean to fall in,” said Lewis. 
“A canoe stole past to port of us, and before 

134 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


I could cry out an Indian had slipped up 
behind me and shoved me into the water, 
but I took him with me. When we came 
up to the surface someone in the canoe 
reached out to us, but instead of pulling us 
in I saw a knife flash and the Indian who 
had pulled me overboard went down with- 
out a gurgle, cut through the throat. I dived 
under, for I didn’t want to make any closer 
acquaintance with the Indian in the canoe. 
Then I came up, and here I am. Where’s 
the canoe ? ” 

‘‘ It must have put into one of the 
caves,” said the captain. ‘‘What I can’t 
understand is how it could have happened 
without Moses hearing.” 

“ I was looking at the palisades,” said 
Mose. “ It all happened at the bow, 
ninety feet away. By the time the ark had 
floated its own length it was all over.” 

“ Go down and get dry clothes, Lewis,” 
ordered the captain. “ Keep a sharp 
135 


THE ARK OF 1803 


watch, the rest of you. There is some- 
thing extraordinary about this — two Indians 
in a canoe try to murder the watch aboard 
an ark, and the second Indian, instead of 
doing his part and killing the steersman as 
the ark drifts by, knifes the first Indian. I 
never heard of such a thing. Are you sure 
you weren’t dreaming when you fell over- 
board? ” 

“Dreaming?” chattered Lewis, stop- 
ing on his way to the cabin. “ Look at 
that!” 

They wheeled and stared behind them. 
Around a small jutting ledge an empty 
canoe was drifting towards them, dancing 
giddily in the ark’s shining wake. Almost 
as they looked a shot rang out from a cave 
that they were passing and John Cutler, 
one of the oldest men of the crew, lurched 
into Kenton’s arms. 

“Veer off shore,” ordered the captain, 

quietly. “ Steady the sweeps. Mac- 

136 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


Afee, stand by ready to catch that canoe. 
Careful with the oar. Don’t upset the 
canoe with it. Steady — steady with the 
sweeps — back water all you can. Shad 
Lincoln, stand by to help MacAfee.” 

“ Aren’t we going back to kill the 
Indian that shot Cutler?” indignantly asked 
Kenton, as he saw the ark swing away from 
the shore. 

‘‘Not here,” said the captain. “Too 
rocky — can’t land. Is John badly wounded? 
Take him into the cabin. I’ll be in and 
dress it as soon as we’re by these caves.” 

“I’m all right,” said Cutler, raising 
himself by Kenton’s help. “ Better hold 
right on, Marion. There may be a party — 
may have fired just to draw us into a trap.” 
He swayed, and tottered into the cabin. 

“We shall go back!” cried Charlie 
Hoyt, savagely. “ Cutler, too, of all of us!” 

“We’ll scalp every one we can lay hold 
of!” added Moses, hotly. 

137 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Their blood was boiling. It was all 
that the young captain could do to preserve 
order. But his voice was quiet and his 
tone so commanding that it cowed them. 
They were crouched under the rail, all 
excepting those who were obliged to stand 
exposed at the sweeps, and MacAfee, who 
was coolly trolling for the dancing canoe. 
Another shot followed them, but fell 
short. 

“ They’re all back there in that cave,” 
said Lincoln, in his slow, deliberate way. 
“ It must irk them to see you fishin’ for 
their war canoe and not be able to pot you. 
Let me take a turn, MacAfee ; maybe I can 
catch it.” 

Let the canoe go,” called Marion. 

It’s not worth getting shot for.” 

But MacAfee had deftly secured his 
prize, and the weighted spear which he 
had thrown stuck quivering in the bottom 
of the light craft. He drew in his line 
138 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 

cautiously, and then Lincoln helped him 
take the canoe aboard. 

‘‘ Here’s news,” drawled Lincoln. He 
held up an unfolded sheet of paper. Mac- 
Afee snatched it from him. 

“It was in the bottom of the canoe, 
weighted with a stone,” Lincoln explained. 
“ That Indian that knifed Lewis’s Indian 
seems to be friendly to all of us, sending us 
messages on a letter stolen from a murdered 
courier, apparently.” 

“ Hush up. Line. Someone get a light.” 

In the lee of the rail they pored over 
the paper, which might not, after all, be 
meant for them. 

“It’s written in blood ! ” cried Moses. 

It held only one word, traced with the 
writer’s forefinger, and that word was — 
DANGER. 

“ Wait ! ” said Mose. “ Isn’t that an 
initial, straggled there?” 

“ I was wonderin’ if you’d any of you 

139 


THE ARK OF 1803 

see that,” said Lincoln. ‘‘ I saw it the first 
thing.” 

“There are two of them,” said Marion, 
controlling his excitement with a great 
effort. “ Look, Lincoln, do you make out 
what I do ?” 

“ I expect so. I make out a ‘ J. C.’ ” 

“ J. C. ! ” repeated Moses. He stared 
from Marion to Lincoln, and back to 
Lewis, who stood trembling as if he had 

taken a chill. “ Why — do you suppose 

that’s meant for Jimmy Claiborne? ” 

The light of the cabin lantern which 
they had brought out showed their awed, 
startled faces. “ I think it is,” began 
Marion, slowly. 

“ Hey you,” he cried, looking up ; 

“man the sweeps! We’re getting too far 
out.” 

“ But the man in the canoe was an 
Indian,” objected Lewis, “ and he must 
have sent the message. He barely had time 


140 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


to write it with the blood that spurted 
over him from cutting the Indian’s throat. 
Ough ! I just saw it spout up as I went 
down.” He gave a great shiver at the 
memory that would haunt him while he 
lived. 

‘‘ The man in that canoe was Jimmy 
Claiborne,” said the captain. “Em sorry, 
men. We can’t land, now. Not with this 
warning.” 

‘‘Not land!'^ 

“ Not to-night. Get your rifles, Kenton 
and MacAfee. Lincoln, you and Lewis at 
the sweeps. Lew needs to get warm. 
Don’t shoot unless we’re attacked in canoes. 
We may have passed the danger Jimmy 
speaks of, or we may be floating into it. I 
must go and look after poor Cutler. Moses, 
mind your oar ! ” 

Kenton and MacAfee confronted the 
captain as he started to go to the cabin. 
“We’re goin’ back for Jimmy,” they said, 


THE ARK OF 1803 


threateningly. “ He saved Lewis, here. 
He’s saved the ark. Do you think we’ll 
slink ofF into safety and leave him to the 
savages ? ” 

The captain wheeled on them. ‘‘ Did 
Jimmy ask for help?” 

‘‘ No, but ” 

“Then mind his warning. He’s play- 
ing his game. He could have come aboard 
when he was in the canoe.” 

“ Dressed as an Indian ?” asked Kenton, 
contemptuously. “ How long would we 
have let him live?” 

“While he told us his name,” returned 
the captain. 

“You know better,” said MacAfee, 
hotly. “He daren’t risk it. You’re a 
coward, Marion Royce, that’s what.” 

“And not avenge Cutler ? ” said Kenton. 
“ Give us a boat. Give us the canoe if you 
won’t give us a boat, and we’ll go back.” 

Marion Royce stood before them fear- 
142 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 

lessly. These were the men he had feared. 
Tried rivermen, both ; utterly fearless, 
utterly insubordinate. A man named 
Merrick, and a younger one named Corson, 
both from Marietta, came forward and 
ranged themselves alongside Kenton and 
MacAfee. ‘‘We’re goin’ with ’em,” they 
said, sullenly. “We don’t turn our backs 
on no friend.” 

Marion faced them. As they stood on 
the deck they were a fair mark in the 
moonlight for any chance robber who might 
pot them from the mouth of one of the 
caves. Lewis and Lincoln were at the 
sweeps. Moses, at the oar, was watching 
with his heart in his throat. 

“You want to help Jimmy?” asked 
Marion. 

“ We’re goin’ to.” 

“You want to avenge Cutler?” 

“ Aye; we’re goin’ to do that, too.” 

“Then wait till daylight, and I’ll go 

143 


THE ARK OF 1803 


back with you, with horses. Now, let me 
see to Cutler.” 

He passed them without waiting for 
their objections. As he stepped into the 
cabin he met Charlie Hoyt. ‘‘Take 
your gun, and watch those Marietta fel- 
lows,” he said. “ If one of them attempts 
to steal a boat, or leave the ark in any way, 
cover him, but don’t shoot. He’ll come 
down.” 

He went to Cutler’s bunk, and found 
him raised almost to a sitting posture, gasp- 
ing for breath. Examining his wound, he 
found him shot through the heart. 

“ Ain’t sufferin’ a mite,” panted Cutler, 
cheerily. “Just make me a dressing of 
slippery elm and stramonium leaves, with a 
leetle warm water, son. That’s what Jane 
alius doctored gunshot wounds with. A 
grand dressing it made.” 

He began to cough, and Marion raised 
him in his arm. A bright stream of 
144 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


arterial blood gushed from between his 
lips. Hastily laying him flat, Marion tried 
to stop the hemorrhage with the means at 
his command, but it was a hopeless effort. 
The old pioneer, who had recovered from 
wounds and fevers in the wilderness, had 
succumbed to a stray bullet where he stood 
in comparative safety in the midst of his 
friends. 

It was a pioneer’s death, merciful 
in comparison with Indian capture, but 
Marion clenched his hands as he looked 
down at him. Kenton and MacAfee would 
not have thought him wanting in loyalty. 
No one who had heard him coolly give the 
unwelcome order to man the sweeps and 
postpone vengeance knew what it had cost 
him to give it. 

The shot that killed Cutler had come 
from some lurking Indian or white rene- 
gade; or, as Cutler himself had pointed out, 
might have been fired for the purpose of 
HS 


THE ARK OF 1803 


provoking the ark’s crew to land ; a war 
party might have been lying in ambush. 
Jimmy’s warning pointed to that. Even if 
the miscreant had been alone and remained 
hidden in the recesses of the cave, it would 
have been impossible to capture him with- 
out losing one or more men. The cur- 
rent, also, was unusually rapid and the 
shore rocky and dangerous. It had been 
impossible to explain all this to the 
mutinous, excited men, but none of these 
facts were ignored by the quick-witted 
young captain, who held all their lives in 
trust for those at home, as well as the 
responsibility for their goods, and the ark, 
and now, as he looked down at John 
Cutler, he seemed to be saying: 

‘‘ If I could avenge you — if I only 
could ! ” 

It was only a moment that he stood so. 
Then a shot rang overhead, quickly fol- 
lowed by a volley. Feet ran along the 
146 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


deck, and shouted orders were repeated 
from bow to stern. Marion ran out, look- 
ing to the priming of his gun as he caught 
it up from a rack. 

Howls and shouts were mingling in a 
pandemonium as he gained the deck. He 
stumbled over Moses, who was rolling 
over and over in the clutches of one of the 
assailants. 

“Take this one, Marion,” said Lincoln, 
speaking almost hurriedly ; “ he’s got my 
knife. I’ll be back for him when I 
take in my sweep. Don’t you let him 
get away without getting back my knife. 
Molly Royce gave it to me.” 

“ Did you give her a penny for it ? ” 
asked Charlie Hoyt, as he staggered by, 
half carrying a struggling form that he 
lifted bodily when he reached the rail, and 
threw into the river. 

Marion stooped to extricate Moses from 
his difficulties, and received a blow from 

147 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Moses’ heavy boot heel that sent him reeling. 
Lewis caught him. 

Marion staggered to his feet. “ Cut 
loose their boat,” he said, stumbling to- 
wards the stern where the attackers’ boat 
rode in tow. 

“ Hold on — nothing in that but dead,” 
said Lewis. ‘‘We shot into ’em, just as 
they came out of a cave after us. They 
shot, but we dropped on the deck after we 
fired and they didn’t hit us. Mose is 
through with his Indian. — No! He’s under 
again ! ” 

“ Take my musket and beat him off! ” 
shouted Kenton, who lay helpless in the 
scuppers. 

Don't shoot!" cried the Indian, sud- 
denly springing up and lifting his hand, 
r m a white man! ” 

“It’s Jimmy,” drawled Lincoln, coming 
back from his careful attention to the star- 
board sweep. “ Why don’t you say who 
148 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


you are, you blockhead, letting Lewis get a 
bead on you before you introduce yourself? 
Have you got my knife, Marion?” 

Jimmy, for it was he, stood panting 
over the prostrate Mose. “ I wanted to get 
through lickin’ him,” he explained. ‘T was 
afraid if I said who I was he’d leave me for 
one of the real robbers.” 

And so I would have,” said Mose, 
sitting up and mopping a bleeding nose 
with his sleeve. I don’t think you’ve any 
right to settle private quarrels when there’s 
something that wants doing like this.” He 
was incensed that he had expended his 
valor on a friend and neighbor, when the 
others had repelled real enemies. He got 
to his feet and felt of himself in high dis- 
content. “You’ve broken one of my ribs, 
Jim Claiborne, and you’ll have to pay for 
it,” he said, fumbling with both hands to 
minister to his bleeding nose and his inter- 
nal injuries at one and the same time. 


149 


THE ARK OF 1803 


It was such an absurd finish to a very 
grave danger, that those who witnessed it 
leaned against the cabin and the rail, laughing 
until they held their sides. Even Kenton 
was laughing, although a torn ligament 
twisted his face with pain the next minute. 

The deck showed littered with scraps 
of clothing and two dead bodies, in the 
moonlight. The members of the crew 
who were unhurt fell to straightening up, 
and Jimmy, in his feathered head-dress and 
uncouth paint, took command of the 
obsequies of his recent companions. The 
two on deck he helped to drop overboard, 
where the river received them as it had 
often received their victims. 

“There's one in the boat you want to 
keep," he said to Marion. “ Whoever shot 
him gets a reward at Natchez from the 
government. He’s got a price on his 
head. I’ll show you which he is in the 
morning — one of Mason’s gang.’’ 

150 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


Mason, the leader of a band of outlaws 
who had infested the river for years, had 
been killed and his head brought into the 
fort for ransom the year previous. 

“ The chap we’ve got back there,” 
Jimmy explained, condescendingly to 
Moses, ‘‘ is Big Harp.” 

At the name, familiar to all rivermen, 
the ark’s crew gazed upon Jimmy with 
something akin to reverence. He accepted 
the tribute for a full minute, growing tall 
in the pride of it. Then, as if he thought 
of something that touched him more closely 
than pride, his uncouth, painted face 
changed. He went over to Marion. 

I couldn’t get to you any other way,” 
he explained. ‘‘ If I’d come aboard when 
that fellow dragged Lewis into the river, I 
ran a good chance of getting killed even 
before I could warn you. And if I hadn’t 
joined in the attack, they’d have killed me. 
I had to lead the party. You see, don’t 


THE ARK OF 1803 

you, Marion ? There wasn’t no other 
way.” 

He looked anxiously into Marion’s face. 
“You can trust me,” he added. “I’ve 
seen all I want of of revenge, and out- 

lawry.” 

“Have you?” asked Moses, elbowing 
forward. 

“ Oh,” said Jimmy, contemptuously — 
^^you! Yes, I’m satisfied with you, too. 
All I want is to stay along on the ark — 
along with the horses and the chickens, 
after I’ve licked Louis Gist. I don’t see 
him anywhere. I thought he was goin’ 
along with you?” 

“He went overboard, up the river,” 
explained Lewis Hoyt. 

The thought of Louis Gist made them 
silent a moment, and Marion remembered 
poor Cutler, the only other victim of their 
perilous voyage so far. 

“Oh,” said Jimmy; “well, I guess I’m 
152 


THE CAVE ROBBERS 


not going to hold that grudge any longer. 
Marion, will you take me along? ” 

Marion had stood silent, thinking of 
Uncle Amasa hiding his breaking heart 
under a brave front as the ark sailed away. 
He wanted to say, “ Oh, Jimmy, why did 
you ! ” but instead of that he held out his 
hand, and the tall young Indian grasped it 
and shook it up and down in a way inherited 
from an Anglo-Saxon ancestry. 

^‘/F/7/we?” said Marion; ‘‘well, you 
just try us ! Some of these fellows wanted 
to mutiny to go back for you, on account 
of your letter — didn’t you, Kenton ? ” 

“ I think you might look at my leg,” 
grumbled Kenton, shamefacedly. 


153 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE TORNADO 


HE sun had risen before the 
crew of the ark finished 
their grim clearing of the 
decks and the skiff in which 
the outlaws had rowed out 
to attack the ark. There 
was no way of telling who 
had fired the shot which 
killed the notorious outlaw, on whose head 
a price of a thousand dollars had been fixed. 
Marion was in favor of burying him in the 
river with his two companions of the skiff, 
but Jimmy had the matter very much at 
heart. 



“Just let me have his head,’’ pleaded 
that young savage. “ If I can take his head 
to the fort I won’t ask them for the reward 
— honest, I won’t. But this Big Harp was 

154 


THE TORNADO 


just about the worst of the whole lot, and 
mebby if the others learn that he’s paid for 
his crimes they won’t be so venturesome. 
He was worse than the Indians.” 

He spoke with so much emotion that 
Marion felt the force of his argument. If 
it became definitely proven that Big Harp 
had been delivered up to justice at the army 
post, it would make a great difference in 
the safety of the pioneers and rivermen. 
They — Big Harp and Little Harp, and John 
Mason — had been the leaders of a band of 
robbers, thirty or more in number, who for 
ten years were the terror of Ohio boatmen; 
they attacked ‘‘ arks ” and ‘‘ keels ” alike, 
and on several occasions had murdered the en- 
tire crew of the captured craft. Their actual 
headquarters had been Diamond Island, just 
below Henderson ; but the caverns higher up 
the river made convenient lurking places, 
from which they could sally forth, or into 
which they could retreat secure from pursuit. 

155 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Jimmy watched the captain anxiously. 
In the bright light of sunrise, Jimmy’s 
paint and feathers failed grotesquely to con- 
ceal the white man. His head had been 
shorn, all but the scalp and forelock, which 
were put up in a piece of tin, with a bunch 
of turkey feathers, while the feathers of 
at least two turkeys hung to the hair of his 
scalp. 

“You’re a sight,” said Moses, as he 
gazed on these uncouth adornments, while 
Marion was making up his mind. 

“ I’d ’a been more of a sight if this Big 
Harp had had his way with me,” answered 
Jimmy, whose eyes never left the young 
captain’s face. “ He wanted to cut off my 
ears and eyelids because I wouldn’t tell him 
exactly when the ark would sail from Fish 
Creek. Only for Logan — the one I went 
away with from my cabin — he would have 
done it, too. Logan was a pretty good 
friend to me because I helped him to get 
156 


THE TORNADO 

away when he had a broken leg. He 
would have been caught and handed over 
to the authorities more than once if I 
hadn’t been along. He was pretty help- 
less. After he was killed by the Shawnees 
I lost my job, though, and as the robbers 
didn’t have any agricultural employment 
for me (they said that that was all I was fit 
for, because I wouldn’t turn pirate), they took 
my gun away from me and launched me in 
a canoe that happened to be hauled up in 
a creek where we camped. There was a 
dead Shawnee lying by it ; and, before they 
let me go. Big Harp and that one-eyed fel- 
low that you dumped out of the skiff just 
now, thought it would be fun to decorate 
me with his head-dress, so that I shouldn’t 
miss the clothes they took from me. Those 
outlaws actually lost a good hour fixing me 
up, and then put me into the canoe and 
shoved me off and told me I could go on 
and join my father at the Chickasaw Bluffs, 

157 


THE ARK OF 1803 


and maybe he'd recognize me by the 
resemblance between us. They wouldn't 
give me even a day's rations. Big Harp 
said the ark would be along and that you'd 
take me in." 

Jimmy told these things stolidly, with- 
out laying any particular stress on them 
until he came to the way in which Big 
Harp and his gang had amused themselves 
by making him into a feathered object of 
derision before launching him on the river 
without food and with no more covering 
than the dead savage had worn. His voice 
trembled with rage when he told of that, 
and Moses, who was always the first to feel 
any strong emotion in those around him, 
and to respond to it, shut his fists passion- 
ately. 

‘‘ I wish we could kill them over 
again," Mose ejaculated. ‘‘ We killed 'em 
too easy. They had ought to have hung." 

Jimmy looked at him. It was the first 
158 


THE TORNADO 


moment he had taken his somber eyes off 
of Marion since he had asked for the out- 
law’s head. 

“Yes, Mose,” he said, “even hanging 
would have been too good for ’em.” 

“ How did they get hold of you again.? ” 
asked Marion. 

“ I drifted for two days and nights before 
I could get ashore,” said Jimmy, taking up 
his story where he had left off. “ They 
weren’t able to find the paddle that the 
dead Indian had had, or else they had 
hidden it themselves, so I had nothing to 
control the canoe with, and I couldn’t get 
to shore.” 

“ Why didn’t you drop overboard and 
swim for it?” asked Lewis. 

“ In that ice water, with that current 
and no knowing how long it would take 
me ? You couldn’t swim in the river, even 
to-day, for fifteen minutes, without doubling 
up with a cramp and going down ! What’s 

159 


THE ARK OF 1803 


the use of asking me a fool question like 
that?” 

‘‘Yes,” added Moses, “what do you 
want to go interrupting him for?” 

“You’re interrupting just as much your- 
self,” retorted Lewis. 

Jimmy smiled at them, and then went 
on addressing Marion. “You get mighty 
hungry when you’ve been floating down 
the river two or three days. Finally, I pad- 
died with my hands into a creek into 
which the water had backed up considerably. 
It was along about sundown, I reckon. 
There were some men working on board an 
ark — not as big as this, and not very much 
more than just decked over. They were 
hammering so hard, trying to get all they 
could done before night, most likely, that 
they di-dn’t hear me shout to them, but 
went right on working while I got my 
canoe beached and started to ’em. I had to 
pick my way through the blackberry bushes 
i6o 


THE TORNADO 


and grapevines that gre\v thick along the 
creek, and I was so sick from hunger that 
I expect I sort of crept towards ’em, won- 
dering if Td have strength to get to 
them before they stopped work and went 
home, and if Fd have strength left to shout 
when they stopped hammering. I was so 
glad to see honest men that that made me 
sort of sick, too. Fd ’a been pearter if it 
had been Indians or outlaws. But, just the 
thought that I was in sight of friends made 
me tremble so I couldn’t scarcely stand up. 
I never remembered my head-dress. When 
I was in the canoe I kept it on because I 
thought if I passed any Indians they 
wouldn’t notice me so much, and when I 
got into the creek and saw the white men 
I forgot everything except to try to get to 
them as quick as I knew how.” 

‘‘ Did they fire at you ? ” exclaimed 
Moses. 

‘‘ Fire .? They fired the minute they 

i6i 


THE ARK OF 1803 

clapped eyes on my head-dress over the 
bushes. They didn’t wait to see the color 
of the rest of me. The minute they fired 
I understood, but it was too late. Some 
Indians who were passing by ran in on 
them before they’d time to load again, and 
scalped the whole outfit, and took me cap- 
tive. They were pleased to death with my 
decorations — I don’t know why ; and they 
made a sort of mascot of me, except that I 
had to carry the loads, when we traveled, 
and they showed me by signs that I’d have 
to do squaw’s work when we got to camp. 
They fed me like themselves, but I was too 
faint to eat their sort of cooking ; and you 
would be, too, if you had seen the way 
they cooked. Then I showed them I 
wanted to cook for myself, and they let me 
do it to get back my strength. I reckon it 
must have been a week. I didn’t keep 
track of time, and we didn’t go near 
any settlements. One night we camped in 
162 


THE TORNADO 

the mouth of a cave near the river. It was 
raining, and it had been raining all day. I 
expect I was feverish and my head was 
flighty, for I got an idea into it that Td 
find the other mouth of the cave, which 
very likely overlooked the river, and sit in 
it and wait for you to come by in the ark. 
It was a little past the first quarter, and I 
thought it had been the last quarter of the 
moon when I left my cabin with Logan. 
You see I was mixed, but I thought I had 
it all clearly reasoned out. So I wandered 
off into the cave.” 

Did the Indians chase you?” asked 
Moses. 

No,” said Jimmy, ‘‘I don’t reckon 
they did. They had too much sense, prob- 
ably, after they’d found how far in I’d 
gone. They hadn’t any idea of getting 
lost themselves. That cave was a hundred 
caves, all partitioned off and running in and 
out of each other. I expect I pretty near 
163 


THE ARK OF 1803 


died in them. All I remember is creeping 
and crawling along on my hands and 
knees most of the time, half the time in 
the water and half the time out, and then I 
went sort of crazy and beat against the 
rocks and screamed until the whole cavern 
mocked and mocked me. The next thing 
I knew I was lying on blankets in a cave 
that was fitted up as a hiding-place, and 
I learned that my rescuers were part of Big 
Harp’s gang. When Big Harp and the 
rest came, they were so amused they 
couldn’t do enough for me. They said 
they had come down to meet you folks, 
and that I should lead the party.” 

How did you come to have the letter 
to write the warning on ? ” asked Moses, 
whose imagination had supplied the rest of 
the story, and run ahead of the narrator. 

“Big Horn wasn’t a good reader,” said 
Jimmy, “and I had been given the letter, 
to make out what he couldn’t make out for 
164 


THE TORNADO 


himself. Big Horn thought it said some- 
thing about the Governor sending some 
money by the brig that was to leave Mari- 
etta with the ‘fresh/ and he thought it 
might be more worth while to make sure 
of the brig than to capture you fellows. 
But when he learned that the word that he 
thought was ‘money’ was ^ militia^' he lost 
interest in the letter, and they decided not 
to wait very long for you folks. If you 
hadn’t come in a day or two, they would 
have gone back further into the caves until 
the brig was safely past.” 

“ I suppose,” said Lincoln, “ that the 
ark we passed, where the men were scalped, 
was the place where you were captured.” 

Jimmy looked absently at Lincoln. “I 
guess that’s about all,” he said to Marion. 
“ Big Harp warned me, when we attacked 
you, that if I turned on any of the gang he 
and the rest of his crowd would avenge 
themselves on any of you they captured, if 
165 


THE ARK OF 1803 


they got the best of the fight. That’s why 
I didn’t kill any of them when the fight 
began.” 

‘‘That’s why you pitched into 
asked Moses, in a sympathetic voice. 

“ Yes,” said Jimmy. “ I didn’t want 
to seem to be idling.” He fixed Marion 
with his steady, dogged eyes. “ Now, may 
I have Big Harp’s head to take to the com- 
mandant at Natchez } ” 

Marion looked from one to another of 
the arksmen. 

“ Tes they shouted. 

“ Yes,” said Marion. 

Cutler’s body was buried that evening 
on a wooded eminence of Cumberland 
Island, overlooking the Ohio and opposite 
the mouth of the Cumberland River. 
Many such solitary graves double-line the 
banks of these great water-ways — the 
unmarked resting places of victims of sav- 
age hate, or outlaw violence and robbery. 

i66 


THE TORNADO 


Later, in the night, the ark passed Diamond 
Island, so long the home of the river pirates. 
It loomed beside them, safe, silent, wooded, 
wrapped in peace. 

The next morning they were floating 
across the broad mouth of the Tennessee 
River, nearly half as wide as the Ohio itself, 
past the site of the pretty city of Paducah. 
At two that afternoon Cairo was sighted, 
with the broad channel of the Mississippi 
in plain view over the forest to the north- 
west. 

Little enough like the populous and com- 
mercially important Cairo of to-day, was the 
Cairo of a century ago ! Not a house was 
then to be discerned on the dreary mud-flats. 
The “ town ’’ consisted — this is not a joke 
— of a single long flatboat, moored by two 
infirm old cables to stumps ashore ! Aboard 
this capacious ‘‘ broadhorn,” however, there 
was a tavern,” a ‘‘saloon,” a smithy and a 
general store ; and, altogether, the queer 
167 


THE ARK OF 1803 


craft harbored seventy or eighty persons, 
men and women. As was not unusual in 
those days, the saloon did the larger 
share of the business, and of the char- 
acter of these early inhabitants of Cairo 
the arksmen were soon able to form an 
opinion. 

For, contrary to their captain’s wishes, 
Merrick, Charlie Hoyt, Simon Corson, 
Kenton and MacAfee insisted on paying 
the floating ‘‘town” a visit, to indulge in a 
social glass and hear the news of the two 
rivers. The ark was, therefore, tied up 
for the night a few hundred yards above 
the “ city,” which six of the older men 
visited in the skiff. 

During the evening, however, an alter- 
cation occurred between the visitors and a 
crew of rough fellows at the saloon ; and 
in the unseemly “ mix-up ” which followed, 
Simon Corson had his right eye badly in- 
jured — in a most unfair fight, it was claimed. 

i68 


THE TORNADO 


He came back to the ark, in that pitiful 
condition, a little past midnight. MacAfee, 
also, had been savagely kicked and beaten. 

So incensed were Corson’s companions 
that it was with difficulty that Marion pre- 
vented them from turning on the town 
with their rifles, at dead of night. He did 
not forget the indignity, however, and 
‘‘ Cairo ” had yet to hear from him on 
this score. 

As for Corson, he was in his bunk for 
two weeks, and suffered a permanent dis- 
figurement. It proved a costly social glass 
for him. 

Casting off very early the next morning, 
the arksmen dropped down past Cairo, 
being jeered from the saloon door as they 
did so, and soon reached the confluence of 
the two mighty rivers. 

It was a scene of quiet, yet imposing, 
grandeur. The strong, muddy current of 
the Ohio, fully a mile in width at flood, 
169 


THE ARK OF 1803 


pushed forcefully out in opposition, and for 
a time seemed to have the mastery ; but 
soon the more voluminous, stronger, and 
even muddier current of the great Father of 
Waters prevailed, and with a thousand 
boiling eddies and vast upheavals of the 
contending streams, the Ohio was forced to 
yield and was borne away captive. 

It was a matter of no little surprise to 
Lewis and Moses — this being their first 
voyage — to find the Mississippi below the 
confluence with the Ohio no wider. But 
the depth was manifestly much greater and 
the current more rapid. Before noon that 
day the ark was passing Iron Banks, a line 
of dark-red bluffs along the left shore. 

The breaking of a sweep, however, 
compelled the men to tie up for two or 
three hours, and while they were here a 
“keeT’ of forty tons, from St. Louis, came 
alongside and spoke them, in the hope of 
buying eggs and poultry. 

170 



A “keel” from ST. LOUIS CAME ALONGSIDE 


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Uplift 


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»- - 


THE TORNADO 


Thus far they had seen but few boats 
on the Ohio, and had actually spoken but 
two, both from up the Wabash — the 
one a broadhorn, the other a keel 
from Vincennes. Yet now, as a chance 
result of the erratic navigation of those 
days, the Mississippi seemed suddenly 
to swarm with ascending and descending 
flats, keels and skiffs. Merry salutes from 
the horns and bugles of the boatmen were 
heard every few minutes. 

A ship, too, was lying-by in the bay 
below Iron Banks ; and a smithy ’’ 
also passed while the captain of the keel 
was hailing them — a cheery ding-dong from 
the blacksmiths' anvils resounding from the 
steep bank. 

Soon after the keel had left them two 
large arks from Kaskaskia veered in, to pass 
the time of day and ask whether any late 
news had been heard from down the river. 
For the attitude of the Spaniards toward 
171 


THE ARK OF 1803 

Americans at New Orleans was now the 
absorbing topic of interest. Whether they 
could make a market or not meant much 
to these arksmen, whose all was often at 
stake on the chances of a voyage. 

A skiff and two “ covered sleds ” from 
Cincinnati, loaded with horses, also came 
in sight up-stream, and seeing the three 
arks lying-by in company, they also veered 
in and joined the little flotilla at the foot of 
Iron Banks. 

No such warm weather had as yet been 
experienced, not even at Big Bone Creek. 

Herons and other aquatic birds were 
flapping lazily up and down the shores; the 
sunshine was so hot and the air so stagnant 
that the horses and other live stock beneath 
the low roofs of the arks were manifestly 
distressed. 

There was much talk of a hostile 
Indian band at Island No. lo; and the 
captains of the two arks from Kaskaskia 
172 


THE TORNADO 


proposed an arrangement very common in 
those days, namely, that they should make 
the three broadhorns and the two covered 
sleds fast to each other by spars and haw- 
sers, and so float down in company, for 
mutual aid and protection in case of attack, 
either by the savages or riotous white boat- 
men. 

Self-reliance and a disposition to manage 
his own boat without depending on others, 
were leading traits of Marion Royce’s 
character ; but, since the other captains 
asked it and his own crew liked the idea, 
he consented ; and the three larger craft 
were made fast abreast, with the two Cin- 
cinnati flats and the skiff astern, and in this 
order they poled off from Iron Banks. . 

It was now about four o'clock in the 
afternoon, the sun still very hot and the air 
close and sultry. Clouds were rising in the 
northwest, however, with promise of a 
breeze or a shower ; and, being desirous of 

173 


THE ARK OF 1803 


catching the first cool breath that came, 
Moses Ayer, Lewis Hoyt and Wistar Royce 
climbed on the roof of their ark. Here 
they could overlook the entire flotilla, as 
well as the shores of the river. 

The peculiar aspect of the sky at once 
attracted their attention. 

‘‘ That’s a mighty queer-looking cloud ! ” 
Lewis exclaimed. ‘‘ Looks like smoke, and 
see how the edges of it are rolling in to- 
gether ! ” 

‘‘ There’s a thunder-squall coming,” said 
Wistar. ‘‘ It’s coming fast, too !” 

“ Below there. Mack,” he shouted to 
his brother, who was forward under the 
roof. ‘‘ Squall coming ! ” 

The young captain climbed to the roof 
to see for himself, for the roofs of the two 
large Kaskaskia boats on each side of them 
obstructed the view from the deck of the 
ark. He had hardly done so, however, 
when they saw the trees on the other shore 

174 


THE TORNADO 


of the river sway, bend, and twist violently. 
Branches, twigs and leaves were whirled 
upward, and immediately the intervening 
water of the river was wildly agitated, 
appearing to rise in the air in vast white 
sheets. 

No opportunity was afforded for precau- 
tions of any sort. They barely had time to 
swing down from the roof when, with a 
wild howl, the squall — a true tornado — was 
upon them ! 

Everything loose on the roof — the large 
poultry-cages, spare sweeps, oars, setting- 
poles, and a part of the mammoth bones — 
were whirled upward and away ; and, not 
only from their ark, but from all the others, 
everything loose went flying to leeward. 
The roof of the ark to windward of them 
was torn off, and, with a terrific crash, went 
hurtling over their heads. 

The shouts of the men blended with 
the squalling of poultry and the hideous 
I7S 


THE ARK OF 1803 


squeals of terrified or injured horses. Im- 
mediately, too, the heavy craft felt the 
impulse of the tornado, and went drifting 
rapidly before it. 

Whether they would have been safer 
apart than together is not easy to say. The 
two flatboats astern prevented the arks from 
using their sweeps ; and, seeing that all six 
of the boats were being blown rapidly 
toward the bank, Marion Royce shouted 
to the captains of the two Kaskaskia arks 
to cut the hawsers and try to get clear of 
each other, so as to use their sweeps. 

If they heard, which is doubtful, 

nothing was done ; in fact, the craft to 

windward was in great distress from waves 
that were breaking aboard her. 

Captain Royce then seized an ax and 
cut the cables himself. His instinct was to 
get free. As he did so one of the spars 
caught, and slipping inboard, crashed 

through the gun-room, seriously injuring 

176 


THE TORNADO 

MacAfee, who had run in there for shelter. 
But the pressure of the wind still held the 
boats together ; they drove on before the 
gale, and within five minutes all went 
ashore where a gravel bank rose steep out 
of deep water. 

Fortunately for the ark, it had the 
middle berth ; for, owing to the momentum 
and weight of the mass of boats, the 
Kaskaskia ark next the bank gave beam, and 
was so crushed that it immediately filled and 
sank, the crew with difficulty escaping 
across to the other boats. 

One of the flats astern — the one inshore 
— also sank. Six of the horses aboard it, 
whose halters it was impossible to cut, were 
drawn down ; the other fourteen of the 
poor animals succeeded in keeping their 
heads above water. The boatmen were 
powerless to do anything for them; indeed, 
the attention of all was given to rescuing 
the crews of the two wrecked boats. 


177 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Rain was now falling in such sheets 
that it was impossible to see objects twenty 
yards away. What became of the six-ton 
skiff that had joined them no one knew. 
So dire was the confusion and uproar of the 
disaster that none of the survivors was able 
to give any information concerning it — 
whether it was swamped, with all on board, 
or had got free and gone out of sight below 
the foot of the bluff. It was manned by 
four pioneers, one of them a clergyman 
named Willis, from the new settlement at 
Fort Jefferson, a little below the mouth of 
the Ohio. 

Two men had been drowned or crushed 
on board the wrecked Kaskaskia ark ; the 
other one had also lost a man, probably 
knocked overboard and drowned when the 
roof was blown off. A man was also 
reported missing from the Cincinnati flat- 
boat. 

Even after the tornado had passed and 
178 


THE TORNADO 


the waves subsided, the three craft which 
had escaped were in bad plight, having lost 
nearly all their sweeps, poles and other 
gear. Evening was at hand, and being 
unable to get away, they lay there against 
the bank all night. 

By working hard with lines and a 
pulley-block, eight of the horses in the 
water were hauled out. The other flat 
from Cincinnati, being a small craft, could 
take but three of them aboard, however, 
and what to do with the poor animals be- 
came a serious question with their almost 
equally luckless owners. Our arksmen 
finally made shift to find room for them 
alongside their own horses. Captain Royce 
consented to take them on shares, and pay 
one-half what he could sell them for in 
New Orleans, when he came back up the 
river in the fall. 

A large brindled wolf-dog, called 
‘‘ Tige,'’ from one of the wrecked boats, 
179 


THE ARK OF 1803 


also came aboard and savagely refused to 
go ashore with his former friends and 
master. 

It was a dreary night for all concerned ; 
doubly so for the crews of the foundered 
boats, who had now no alternative before 
them save to trudge disconsolately back 
along the river bank for hundreds of miles, 
and deem themselves fortunate if they 
reached home without losing their scalps. 

Working by lantern-light, our own 
arksmen hewed out new steering sweeps 
from planks ripped from the bulwarks, and 
succeeded in getting off at daylight. They 
had had enough of river partnerships. 
Captain Royce gave such friendly aid as he 
was able to the other boats, but firmly 
declined to establish any closer relations 
with them. Altogether this first day on 
the Mississippi had been an exciting one, 
but even greater perils were at hand. 


i8o 


CHAPTER IX 


THE LANDSLIDE 

EVER day dawned 
fairer than that follow- 
ing the tornado. Our 
arksmen, thankful to 
have escaped the fate 
of their fellow -voya- 
gers, put off early, and at noon were passing 
Island No. lo. 

Here, by Marion Royce’s orders, the 
men took their rifles and lay concealed 
below the rail of the ark, Merrick and 
Charlie Hoyt alone standing exposed at the 
sweeps. After this fashion they passed 
down the narrow reach on the left, keep- 
ing a sharp eye to both shores. 

No enemies were sighted, however, and 
at four in the afternoon the infant town of 
New Madrid came into view, on its pretty 

i8i 



THE ARK OF 1803 


plain along the right bank, which as yet 
the river had not gnawed away. The 
place was one of the feeble efforts of the 
Spaniards to establish colonies in the Miss- 
issippi Valley. 

For, although at the date of our story, 
the Spanish were in possession of New 
Orleans and the lower course of the river, 
this control was nominal and temporary, the 
outcome of treaty between France and 
Spain, rather than real or permanent. The 
two nations which, for the century prior to 
1803, had so long and so bitterly contended 
for the mastery of this peerless region, 
were France and England; and, for a period 
of time as great as that which has elapsed 
since the War of the Revolution, the whole 
Mississippi Valley was virtually French 
territory. The Louisiana Purchase marked 
the close of an era, the end of a century of 
French sovereignty; this event transferred 
the control of by far the most important 
182 


THE LANDSLIDE 


portion of what is now the United States, 
from the French to the Anglo-American 
people. 

At New Madrid not less than a hundred 
river craft of every variety were tied up, 
either for purposes of trade or repair ; 
‘‘keels” and barges from Pittsburgh, the 
full-rigged brig from Marietta, four arks 
from Vincennes, flatboats from far up the 
Wabash, with a great number of skiffs, 
and pirogues from the various military 
posts. So diverse and heterogeneous a 
gathering of boatmen could hardly meet 
and mingle without friction; and, in strict 
point of fact, the first thing our arksmen 
saw, on veering to the bank, was a “ rough- 
and-tumble ” between the Marietta brig's 
crew and some boatmen from up the 
Wabash. 

The latter had a flatboat loaded with 
sugar, and live turkeys, not less than three 
hundred of which fine birds were confined 

183 


THE ARK OF 1803 

in huge wooden cages on the roof of their 
craft. The brig’s crew, victorious in the 
scuffle, levied heavily on the flatboatmen’s 
turkeys. 

At last, the little garrison at the post 
attempted to restore order, but with indif- 
ferent success ; the brig’s crew threatened to 
sack the town if molested, and appeared 
able to make good the menace. Such was 
New Madrid in 1803 . 

Marion Royce’s only object in landing 
here was to procure two strong sweeps for 
the ark. Having accomplished this in the 
course of an hour or two, he resumed his 
voyage and continued for two hours longer 
before tying up in the eddy at the foot of 
an island for the night. 

Here, both the arksmen and their live 
stock w'ere badly tortured by large, ravenous 
mosquitoes. Moreover, they sorely missed 
their poultry, this and the milk from their two 
cows being important items of the food supply. 

184 


THE LANDSLIDE 


They were also rendered apprehensive 
from a bold visit by a canoe containing 
four Indians, supposed to be Choctaws, that 
came alongside the ark and held up a 
bearskin as if to sell it. But Marion was of 
the opinion that their real motive was to 
learn if an attack on them would be likely 
to prove successful. Three men watched, 
by turns, all night. 

As they were putting off at daybreak, 
three lumber-laden arks from Pittsburgh 
appeared and made a landing near them for 
repairs, one of them having run on a snag 
during the night. That day they made 
about sixty miles, passing Island No. 31 at 
four in the afternoon; and then crossing 
over to avoid Flour Island, tied up for the 
night at the foot of a high bluff of yellow 
clay, crowned by forest. 

A huge tree which had fallen down the 
bank afforded opportunity to make fast, 
although the current was here very swift 
185 


THE ARK OF 1803 


and strong, making in against the bank so 
forcefully that the ark was pressed hard 
against the great branches of the tree-top, 
which lay partly in the water. 

Flour Island, so called from a disaster 
to flour-laden boats which had recently 
occurred there, lay over opposite them ; 
and there appeared to be an Indian camp 
near the lower end of it, judging from the 
fires, and an uproar of savage outcries that 
was borne to their ears. No such swift, 
dangerous currents had been encountered 
anywhere since the voyage began as these 
which set in through the ‘‘ races ’’ between 
the islands and bluffs. The ark, being deep- 
laden, they were not a little apprehensive 
for her safety. 

Just as they were making fast, too, 
another lumber-laden barge came drifting 
past, close into shore, and struck them with 
such force as to stave in the bulwarks aft and 
break two stanchions that supported the roof. 

i86 


THE LANDSLIDE 


As the two boats hung in contact for a 
moment, there was a singular accession to 
the crew of the ark. A large pet bear, 
terrified, perhaps, by the crash, and seeing, 
as he thought, a way of escaping ashore, 
broke his chain and leaped across from the 
lumber barge to the roof of the ark just as 
the two boats swung clear of each other. 

With a muttered malediction from her 
captain, who seemed in a bad temper, the 
lumber boat drifted away on the swift cur- 
rent. The bear, meanwhile, was making 
for the shore, but when he attempted to 
clamber down the other side of the roof, 
his chain caught in a crack between the 
planks and brought him up short at the 
bulwarks of the main deck below. 

Thus, the pet of the lumbermen was 
transferred from one craft to the other, and 
all in a space of less than five seconds of 
time ! 

In the gathering dusk the arksmen 
187 


THE ARK OF 1803 


stood staring after the barge which had 
given them so rude a salute. Captain Royce 
then hailed them: 

‘‘ Hallo, the barge ! ” 

“ Hallo, the ark ! ” was the gruff 
response from the receding craft. 

‘‘You’ve left something!” Marion 
shouted, laughing. 

“And good riddance!” was the uncivil 
response. 

Meanwhile the wolf-dog, Tige, who 
considered himself guardian of the ark, 
set upon the bear, tooth and nail, but 
came off badly from the encounter. The 
crew gathered round, and after looking the 
newcomer over by lantern-light, secured 
him more comfortably and fed him. He 
was a fine black bear, about a year and a 
half old. 

After supper, and as the evening passed, 
Marion Royce, according to his custom 
when repairs were needed, set to work to 

i88 


THE LANDSLIDE 


replace the broken stanchion posts, and 
called Moses Ayer to hold the lantern for 
him. Lewis Hoyt was on the roof out for- 
ward, doing lookout duty and watching the 
fires on Flour Island; but the rest of the 
crew had turned in. 

Presently Lewis came back aft. ‘‘ I 
think there’s a buffalo up the bluff,” he 
said. 

Moses laughed. Captain Royce, busy 
with his adz, paid little attention ; buffalo 
were still to be found on the prairies along 
the river. 

Lewis stood near them for a few 
moments, then went forward again. The 
ark chafed against the tree branches with 
harsh, creaking sounds ; frogs were croak- 
ing, and from the island, at intervals, came 
a singular noise, as of some large horn 
blown with great effort. This was fol- 
lowed by the reports of guns and loud yells ; 
but whether the savages over there were 
189 


THE ARK OF 1803 


celebrating some festival, or fighting, was 
not clear. 

Captain Royce went on with his work. 
Before long, however, Lewis joined them 
again. ‘^There’s something up the bluff,” 
he insisted. 

‘‘How d’ye know?” said Moses. “You 
can’t see it, can you?” 

“ But I can hear it,” replied Lewis, 
nervously. “ A stone or something rolled 
down just now.” 

“ Stones and earth often roll down when 
the water is high,” remarked Captain 
Royce. 

“ But I tell you there’s something up 
there ! ” repeated Lewis. 

“Oh, Lew’s scared,” said Moses. 

“No more scared than you!” retorted 
Lewis. “ If it’s a buffalo. I’m going to 
shoot it.” 

“Don’t you go to firing, Lewis,” Marion 
said. “ Let the buffalo go. And you had 
190 


THE LANDSLIDE 


better get up on the roof again,” he con- 
tinued. “ I want you to keep a sharp eye 
up-stream for boats or floating trees. Don’t 
come down here again till I send a man to 
take your place.” 

Thus admonished, Lewis climbed on the 
roof once more and remained there for an 
hour or so, when Moses, his task of holding 
the lantern being over, went up to see if 
anything new had happened. 

Of late the two boys had wrangled 
somewhat ; ever since Moses had shot the 
gobbler ” he affected a certain superiority 
over Lewis, although he was not as old as 
the latter by a year. Lewis resented this. 

‘‘I know what you came up here for,” 
Lewis said, shortly. “You think you will 
have that bear ! ” 

“Well, what if I do?” exclaimed 
Moses. “You claimed Tige.” 

“ Tige is only a dog,” replied Lewis. 
“ He will not fetch anything, but we can 


THE ARK OF 1803 


swap that bear for a silver-mounted rifle at 
New Orleans.’’ 

And I shall have it ! ” insisted Moses. 
“ You were all so fast to claim Tige. Now, 
I claim the bear.” 

“You never want to play fair in any- 
thing ! ” exclaimed Lewis.” 

“And you are always whining when any- 
body gets even with you ! ” Moses retorted. 

What further plain truths the boys 
might have told each other is not certain ; 
but, at this juncture, both were startled by a 
pebble that came bouncing down the bluff 
and hopped clear across to the roof of the 
ark, thence off into the river. 

“ Now, what do you think did that?” 
whispered Lewis, gripping his rifle and 
peering sharply into the night mists that 
enveloped both river and bluffs. 

“Oh, ’twas just a little slide of loose 
earth that came down, and the stone hap- 
pened to hop across here,” said Moses. 

192 


THE LANDSLIDE 


‘‘ But that’ s just the way it did twice 
before,” whispered Lewis. ‘‘ I tell you, 
Mose, there’s something up there. I be- 
lieve I can see something, too, up there 
against the sky, ’mongst the tree trunks,” 
he added. “ I’ve a good notion to fire at it.” 

‘‘ Mack told you not to,” said Moses. 

‘‘Well, then, you go get Tige and put 
him up here, and get the lantern,” rejoined 
Lewis, after they had listened a while. 
“ Let’s tie the lantern to the end of one of 
these long, new setting-poles, and hoist it 
up high. Maybe we can see then what’s 
up there!” 

This idea pleased Moses. He swung 
down from the roof, put Tige up, and get- 
ting the lantern, proceeded to light the 
candle, after the tedious method of those 
days. Passing his arm through the big 
wooden ring, he was about to climb up to 
the roof when a deep rumble was heard, 
like low, heavy thunder. 

m 


THE ARK OF 1803 


The ark started violently, then seemed 
to receive a tremendous impulse, as if 
pushed off by a giant hand from the bank. 
It careened far over. Every timber cracked. 
The live stock lurched and leaped back, 
tugging at their halters. Then the heavy 
craft appeared to rise, like a ship on a great 
wave at sea. Momentarily, too, a sharp 
crash was heard, accompanied by a shock 
as from a sudden blow. The whole for- 
ward end of the roof broke down, and 
distressed squeals rose from the horses. 

Moses Ayer, who was on the rail in the 
act of climbing up, was pitched headlong 
into the river. As he rose he felt the side 
of the ark come hard against him, and a 
loose plank from the roof slid down close 
beside his head. He caught hold of it and 
held on, floating with the current. 

Captain Royce and Shadwell Lincoln, 
who were still awake in the gun-room, 
sprang forth at the first rumble, but were 


194 


THE LANDSLIDE 


thrown down by the violent lurch that fol- 
lowed it. Shouts of terror were heard from 
those who had been asleep. 

No one knew what had happened; but, 
hearing the crash forward. Captain Royce 
made his way there as fast as he could, and 
tried to learn the extent of the damage. 
The ark was rocking heavily, and immedi- 
ately her young captain perceived that 
they had broken adrift and were floating 
down-stream. Shouting to Hoyt and Lin- 
coln, he bade them man the after-sweep 
with all speed and try to keep clear of the 
bank; for the craft was going broadside to 
the current. 

It was not till the men tried to work 
the sweep that they discovered a long tree 
trunk lying afoul of them forward — across 
the broken roof. Apparently, it had fallen 
on them from up the bluff; yet they did 
not appear to be leaking. 

Distressed cries of “ Hallo, the ark ! ’’ 
195 


THE ARK OF 1803 


were now heard astern ; and the captain at 
once began calling the crew by name, to 
see if any one were missing. All answered 
except Moses and Lewis. It was then 
remembered that Lewis had been on look- 
out duty upon the roof. 

‘‘ That’s Mose back there in the water ! ” 
Wistar Royce exclaimed. ‘‘ I know by 
the voice.” 

‘‘Get out the skiff!” exclaimed the 
captain, and all haste was made to do so ; 
for, by Captain Royce’s orders, the skiff was 
was now hauled aboard every night. 

Wistar, meanwhile, was answering 
Moses’ shouts, calling out to him to keep 
afloat, if he could, till they got to him. 
Claiborne and Lincoln immediately put 
out, rowing back against the stream, and 
found the boy floating with both arms 
clasped about the plank. He was wet and 
cold, but otherwise uninjured. 

“ But where is Lewis ? Do you know 
196 


THE LANDSLIDE 


anything about Lewis?’’ were Marion 
Royce’s first questions when they had 
Moses aboard. 

Moses could tell them little, however, 
except that Lewis had been on the roof, 
and that he thought he had heard him 
shout, ‘‘You red scamp, you!” when the 
landslide occurred, for such they now con- 
cluded had been the cause of the accident. 
The side of the bluff, and with it a number 
of trees, had slid down into the river. 

Such subsidences of the banks are of 
common occurrence in time of flood on the 
Mississippi, owing to the undermining 
action of the powerful current. Tracts, 
many acres in extent, with the forest grow- 
ing thereon, are suddenly submerged. 

They succeeded in cutting away the tree 
that fouled them, and then they moored 
the ark against a willow bank three or four 
miles below. Lewis’ disappearance had 
filled the young captain with the gravest 
197 


THE ARK OF 1803 

solicitude. It was feared that the tree had 
struck and crushed him. It was now 
noticed, too, that Tige was not aboard the 
ark ; and Moses remembered about hoisting 
the dog to the roof a few moments before 
the landslide occurred. 

‘‘ That tree knocked them both over- 
board,” said Charlie Hoyt, with conviction, 
and all were inclined to agree with him. 

Captain Royce would not go on, how- 
ever, till careful search had been made, and 
as soon as day dawned he and Wistar, with 
Charlie Hoyt and Lincoln, took the skiff 
and pulled back up-stream to the bluff 
whence they had been so roughly cast adrift. 

No trace of the missing boy was here dis- 
covered, however ; they landed, and climb- 
ing up the bank, saw where the entire side 
of it had collapsed, and a dozen or more large 
cotton-wood trees had slid down. It was 
one of the latter that had fallen aboard the 
ark. 


198 


THE LANDSLIDE 


The search alongshore, both above and 
below, was continued for an hour or more, 
and they shouted repeatedly, but obtained 
no response. The conclusion forced on 
the minds of all was that the boy had been 
knocked overboard when the roof broke 
down, and had been swept away by the 
rapid current and drowned. 

On returning to the ark. Captain Royce 
found that three or four hours’ work would 
have to be done before going on. Two 
horses were so badly crushed that it became 
necessary to kill them. A third was slightly 
injured, and was put in slings. To some 
extent, too, the roof was patched up; but 
when all was done, the old craft bore visible 
evidence of rough usage. 

It was not till past noon that they got 
off from the willow bank and resumed the 
voyage — with heavy hearts. 

By four o’clock that afternoon another 
high bluff came into view down the river — 
199 


THE ARK OF 1803 


the third of that picturesque series known 
to boatmen as the Chickasaw Bluffs. 

And this was ever afterward memorable 
to our arksmen. As they drifted down 
near it shouts were heard from the woods 
crowning the river -front. The barking of 
a dog also came to their ears. Two men 
could be seen high up the bluff, and one of 
them was swinging his arms as if making 
signals. 

“ I believe that’s Lewis ! ” Moses 
shouted, in great excitement. “ Lewis and 
Tige ! ” 

‘‘But that other looks like an Indian!” 
exclaimed Wistar. 

They scarcely knew what to think of it 
at first, but as the ark floated past they made 
sure that it was Lewis ; and Captain Royce 
at once ordered the men at the sweeps to 
veer inshore. So swift was the current, 
however, that the ark floated on for a mile 
or more before a landing could be effected. 


200 


THE LANDSLIDE 


But they had no more than carried a 
line ashore to some willows, growing on a 
low point, when Tige, barking joyously, 
burst through the cane thickets, and was 
followed a moment later by Lewis himself. 
And with him — to the astonishment of the 
arksmen — was a brawny Indian, decked out 
after the manner of a Chickasaw chief, but 
grinning broadly and holding up his right 
hand in token of a peaceful intent. 


201 


CHAPTER X 


SAM HOKOMOKE ” 

rO\J needn’t be scared ! ” 
Lewis exclaimed, for Moses 
was getting his rifle. ‘‘ He’s 
somebody you know. Guess 
who he is ! Guess ! Guess ! 
Hurry and guess — only you’ll 
never guess ! And he got me 
out of the river ! ” 

The captain and Lincoln stared with all 
their eyes, as Lewis and his big rescuer 
came aboard, the Indian grinning broadly 
and offering to shake hands. 

“Me come see my son,” he announced 
in good, but halting, English. “ Me James 
Claiborne one time. Now me Sam Hoko- 
moke.” 

“ He’s a chief,” added Lewis, excitedly. 
“A Chickasaw chief.” 



202 





ii 


GUESS WHO HE IS 


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Page 202 








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«SAM HOKOMOKE” 


"James Claiborne ! ” ejaculated Marion. 

He was incapable of another word. He 
simply stood and stared. 

“Jimmy! ” shouted Moses, dashing past 
into the cabin, “ Jimmy 1 Here's your pa ! " 

Marion had mechanically reached out 
and grasped the Indian's hand and was 
bewilderingly shaking it. As soon as he 
recovered himself a little, he released it 
and allowed Lincoln to follow his ex- 
ample. 

Lincoln spoke with much gravity. 
“You don’t say,” he drawled. “No 
wonder his robber friends told Jimmy that 
his pa would know him by the resemblance, 
when they fixed him up.” 

James Claiborne, or Sam Hokomoke, 
drew himself up slightly, and the smile 
died out of his face at this reference to his 
having robber friends. 

“ Now you’ve offended him ! ” said 
Lewis, angrily. “ I tell you he’s a big 
203 


THE ARK OF 1803 


chief in his tribe, though he isn’t dressed 
in his war togs.” 

Oh,” murmured Lincoln ; ‘‘just a 
social call. Well, we’re mighty glad to 
see you, Sam Hokomoke, or James Clai- 
borne, whichever name you like the best, 
and we know Jimmy will be.” 

“We are very glad to have you here,” 
said Marion, rousing from his stupefaction 
to his responsibilities as captain. It was 
almost impossible for him, any more than 
for Shadwell Lincoln, to accept him as a 
white man, like themselves. He had lost 
all resemblance to a white man at first 
glance. He was the color of seasoned 
leather, and the fact that he had fallen into 
the Indian ways of speech in his seldom 
practised English, made it seem as if he 
could not possibly understand everything 
they said as easily as they understood one 
another. 

“ We have missed you,” continued 
204 


“SAM HOKOMOKE” 


Marion, realizing that this was an absurd 
way to state the case, but unable for the 
life of him to think of a better one. 

James Claiborne grinned again. He 
had said more already than he was 
accustomed to, and apparently Marion’s 
statement did not strike him as being in 
need of any verbal acknowledgment. 

“Here’s Jimmy!” shouted Moses, 
dashing out of the cabin in front of him, 
like a herald before a royal pageant. 
“Jimmy, here’s your pa! — Ain’t it the 
greatest thing you ever set your eyes on?” 
he whispered to Lincoln, as he squeezed 
close in to the quickly thickening group. 
“ Think how Jimmy set out to find him, 
and the dangers he went through, and the 
suffering, and to have his pa just come 
strolling aboard — and a regular Indian 
chief! ” 

“I guess / had some hand in it,” said 
Lewis, darting a scornful look at Mose. 

205 


THE ARK OF 1803 


“H’m ! Might have knowed you’d be 
grumbling because you ain’t the whole 
show,” retorted the ever-ready Mose. 

Considered as a consummation, such as 
Moses described it, the meeting between 
Jimmy Claiborne and his father left a good 
deal to the imagination. Jimmy had ad- 
vanced forward, thrust from behind, forcibly, 
rather than moved by an impelling filial 
emotion. Within arm’s length of the big 
Indian he came to a dead halt. The 
pressure from behind had withdrawn itself, 
leaving him rooted to the deck. He was 
face to face with his father, but it took a 
shrewd physiognomist to discover it. James 
Claiborne Hokomoke, on his side, made no 
advance. The traditions of fifteen years 
among the Indians may have made the 
American observances strike him as inade- 
quate to the occasion. Perhaps he would 
have preferred to hold some sort of council, 
and sit in a circle for hours, before a word 
206 


SAM HOKOMOKE’’ 


was spoken on either hand. The arksmen 
grew fidgety. Jimmy grew red. Some 
intuition of this embarrassment evidently 
stirred the white man’s brain in Hokomoke, 
bringing with it a train of more or less 
faded and obliterated memories. 

‘‘ You my son ? ” he asked. 

Jimmy hesitated. ‘‘ I reckon I am,” he 
answered, deprecatingly. He did not mean 
to appear doubtful, but he was embarrassed. 
A more positive answer would have seemed 
to him pushing — like attracting attention 
to himself. His eyes strayed imploringly 
to Marion, but the young captain had 
stepped back to give him the entire floor. 

Humph ! Ugly ! ” was his father’s 
comment. 

There was a moment of astonishment 
at this unexpected sally. With his long 
scalp and forelock and the rest of his hair 
in half grown tufts, and the paint only 
partly worn off his face, Jimmy’s appear- 
207 


THE ARK OF 1803 


ance certainly was not such as to make a 
parent proud. A great laugh went up from 
the men, in which Sam Hokomoke joined 
as heartily as any one, and with that laugh 
the atmosphere of constraint cleared, and 
Jimmy felt at ease. 

The white man, who had so unaccount- 
ably turned his back on his family and 
disappeared for so many years, was almost 
indifferent to the news they poured into 
his ears about Fish Creek and its people. 
He asked no questions, but he listened with 
some show of interest to the things they 
told him of his father, and Maria, his wife. 
He accepted the hospitality which Marion 
extended him, but expressed no enthusiasm 
when it was proposed that he should return 
with them to Fish Creek in the autumn. 
He made no further explanation of his reluc- 
tance than might be gathered from the simple 
comment, ‘‘ Squaw good,” and he had no 
messages for Maria, although to his father 
208 


‘‘SAM HOKOMOKE’* 


he sent several long speeches, beautiful with 
Indian symbolism and sentiment. 

“ But how on earth did you meet each 
other, and where in the world have you 
been ? asked Marion of Lewis, when they 
were floating down the river again, and a 
reserved relationship had established itself 
between Jimmy and his father. 

“ Been chasing along the bank,” replied 
the boy. “ I ran by you last night. Didn’t 
you stop somewhere?” 

“ We stopped and went back to look 
for you,” replied Captain Royce. 

“ That was when I went by you, and 
didn’t know it ! ” exclaimed Lewis. “Then 
after we had run a long way, Sam Hoko- 
moke climbed up that high bluff and saw 
ye cornin’ down-stream. And I tell ye I 
was glad ! ” 

“ But how came you ashore in the first 
place ? ” exclaimed Moses. “ Did you jump 
ashore when the tree fell on us ? ” 


209 


THE ARK OF 1803 


“No, I didn’t!’’ replied Lewis, shortly. 
“ I didn’t have a chance. I went head 
foremost into the river ! But that wasn’t 
the first of it,” Lewis added. “ The whole 
bluff slid down to begin with, and Sam 
Hokomoke with it. 

“ Didn’t I tell ye that there was some- 
one up there?” Lewis interrupted himself 
to say to Moses. “ Didn’t I say so ?” 

“You said you believed there was a 
buffalo up there,” Moses admitted. 

“I said ‘something’ was up there,” 
insisted Lewis. “ Well, ’twas Hokomoke ” 
— somehow it seemed impossible to call 
him by the name of Claiborne. “He tossed 
them little stones down to attract our atten- 
tion, just for fun, but when the bank caved 
in he was as surprised as anybody, I guess, 
for down he came with it, head first ; but 
he gave a mighty jump, and landed on the 
ark roof, within three feet of me. I 
thought he was going to scalp me, and I 


210 


‘‘SAM HOKOMOKE’* 

clinched him — for there was no chance to 
get up my gun.” 

“Was that when you said, ‘You red 
scamp, you ? ’ ” exclaimed Moses. 

“Maybe,” replied Lewis. “I don’t 
know what I said. I thought he meant 
me, and I clinched, and Tige jumped for 
him, too. But just then something struck 
us. D’ye say ’twas a tree ? The whole 
roof went smash, and Tige and me and 
Hokomoke went heels over head into the 
river. 

“ I guess I’d ’a been drowned sure,” 
Lewis continued, more soberly. “I went 
down, down, down, and swallowed con- 
siderable water. I thought I never’d come 
up ; but when I did, he had me by the 
hair, and was makin’ for the bank with 
me. He got out and pulled me out. I 
thought he had only hauled me out to get 
my scalp, and I tried to break away from 
him. But he began to say, ‘ Me no kill ! 


211 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Me no kill ! Me white man/ Tige, too, 
never once offered to bite him after we got 
ashore. 

‘‘As soon as I found I hadn’t got to 
fight, I began to look for the ark,” Lewis 
went on, “ but it had gone. I hallooed 
four or five times, but couldn’t hear any- 
thing of you, though I heard somebody, 
whose voice sounded like Mose’s, away 
down the river. We sat and rested a while, 
and then Hokomoke gave me a pull by the 
arm, and said, ‘ Me go catch white man’s 
boat.’ And we started after you through 
the swamps and cane — an awful place to get 
through in the night. I don’t believe I 
would ever got down here if it hadn’t been 
for him. I told him about us, and then he 
told me who he was. That’s all.” 

In spite of their efforts to keep him 
longer, Sam Hokomoke took leave of the 
arksmen the next day at a camp of his tribe 
near the fourth Chickasaw bluff. 


212 


‘‘SAM HOKOMOKE*^ 


“ It’s cert’n’y curious,” said Jimmy, as 
they watched him disappear, waving his 
hand and grinning back at them, “ to think 
I have a father who is a full-fledged Indian 
chief, and that I have an invitation from 
him to visit him or call upon him for 
assistance whenever I please.” 

“ The strangest part of it is that the 
Spaniards have treaties with them against 
us Americans, and that they’re our worst 
enemies,” said Marion. 

No adventure worthy of note now befell 
them for a number of days. They passed 
the mouth of the St. Francis River and 
many natural meadows, or prairies, at 
several of which settlers’ cabins had recently 
been built. Here they were sometimes 
able to exchange corn and wheat for eggs, 
poultry, bear meat and venison. 

In two days the mouth of the Arkansas 
River was passed. At the new settlement 
of Palmyra they tied up for a day and a 
213 


THE ARK OF 1803 


half, in order to obtain larger sweeps and to 
mend the roof of the ark. The next day 
the Grand Gulf Hills came in view, and 
during the afternoon both Captain Royce 
and Shadwell Lincoln found that all their 
skill and experience barely sufficed to keep 
their heavily-laden craft out of Grand Gulf 
Eddy. For here the channel narrows, and 
has a vast whirlpool on each hand. 

It was now the latter part of June, and 
despite many perils and accidents, the ark 
was getting well toward its destination. 
But the night after they had passed Grand 
Gulf proved one of the most exciting of 
the voyage. No favorable place for tying 
up to the bank had presented itself that 
afternoon, but as twilight came on they 
veered into a small bayou, which opened 
into the forest on the eastern, or Mississippi, 
shore. 

Such creek mouths were far from being 
ideal stopping-places on account of mos- 
214 


SAM HOKOMOKE 


quitoes, which, at this season, tortured man 
and beast almost beyond endurance. The 
day had been very warm, and despite the 
best that could be done for their comfort, 
the live stock on the ark suffered exceed- 
ingly. 

Only ten of the crew mustered at mess 
that night. Corson had not yet recovered; 
Clark MacAfee still complained of his inju- 
ries, and Obed Hargous and Wistar Royce 
were also ill from the effects of bad water. 

It was a dismal place, this narrow 
bayou, overhung with lofty trees, and the 
gray, trailing mosses, which brushed the 
roof of the ark. Around, on every hand, 
thousands of frogs were croaking, while 
here and there water-moccasins lay stretched 
along dead cypress limbs that had fallen on 
the stagnant waters. One was found on the 
roof of the ark as the crew were tying up. 

Moses and Lewis made short work of 
this intruder, and set lanterns forward and 
215 


THE ARK OF 1803 

aft, the better to see if more snakes crept 
aboard. 

While eating supper tney could hear 
the bellowing of alligators, which began 
immediately after dark. The bayou ap- 
peared to be a haunt of these formidable 
reptiles. Alligators, indeed, seem to have 
been far more numerous, as well as larger, 
a century ago than at present. We now 
rarely hear of one being seen above the 
mouth of the Red River ; but in early days 
they were found as far north as New 
Madrid and the mouth of the Ohio. If 
we may believe the accounts given by boat- 
men, an alligator twenty feet in length 
was not an unusually large reptile in the 
days of the Louisiana Purchase. 

Meanwhile the horses, frightened prob- 
ably by the sound, were snorting loudly. It 
became evident that the reptiles smelled the 
live stock. It was not believed at first that 
they could clamber aboard ; but fears of 
216 


SAM HOKOMOKE’’ 


this soon arose, for one of the big reptiles, 
having apparently climbed out on a fallen 
magnolia, dashed for the side of the ark, 
forward, where he struck his head so hard 
as to cause a considerable shock to the 
boat. This raised a great commotion 
among the horses. The claws, or flip- 
pers, of other alligators could be heard 
constantly scratching the sides, and at 
length the big fellow came tumbling over the 
rail at the very heels of the horses. 

The uproar that followed can be im- 
agined ; the men shouting, the horses 
kicking and squealing, Tige barking, and 
the pet bear growling in a savage chorus. 

As if terrorized into abnormal activity, 
this alligator lashed right and left with his 
formidable tail, and snapped savagely at the 
legs of the horses and at the pike-poles 
with which the crew attacked it. 

One of the horses kicked the reptile 
and it scuttled back against the bulwarks. 


217 


THE ARK OF 1803 


rattled, dashed headlong past the gun-room, 
and jammed itself between a post there and 
the rail. Here it stuck fast, and Captain 
Royce, who had run to get a rifle, 
approached and fired the piece into the 
reptile’s gaping throat. 

No more of the saurians got on board, 
or the voyage might have ended then and 
there; but it was not till day dawned that 
the scaly creatures began to sink, and swim 
away to their coverts. 

At sunrise they poled out of the bayou, 
and were glad to feel the ark floating with 
the river again. But adventures and acci- 
dents, as has been often noted, rarely come 
singly. The current bore them over to- 
ward the Spanish, or Louisiana shore, and 
as the ark drifted past a bank of thick 
willows, it was suddenly drawn into the 
rapid outset of water through a crevasse. 

As is frequently the case along the 
lower course of the Mississippi, the surface 


‘‘SAM HOKOMOKE** 

of the river current is here higher than 
the swamps lying adjacent to the banks, 
inundating the surrounding country, and 
either finding its way back to the main 
stream, hundreds of miles below, or else, as 
in the case of the Atchafalaya Bayou, reach- 
ing the Gulf of Mexico by other channels. 

So vast is the quantity of alluvial mud 
brought down by this mighty stream that 
the river constantly exhibits a tendency to 
deposit and raise banks for itself above the 
level of the low country through which it 
flows. From the nature of things, how- 
ever, these banks cannot go on increasing 
in height beyond a certain well-marked 
limit. 

Charlie Hoyt and Wistar Royce were 
standing by the long sweep, or steering oar, 
at the time, and Lewis Hoyt had just gone 
forward on lookout duty. As they floated 
past the willow bank a skiff with four 
rowers, farther out on the river, came up 
219 


THE ARK OF 1803 

and hailed them. Lewis turned to answer 
and asked, ‘‘What news of the Spaniards?’’ 

As he listened for their reply he felt the 
bow of the ark swing shoreward, and 
glanced back at the steersmen. But Wistar 
and Charlie were staring at him. He then 
saw the gap in the bank and the water 
surging through it — a gap no more than 
fifty feet wide ; but, before he could even 
shout to the steersmen, the ark had headed 
into it and was sucked through. 

For a hundred yards or more the tor- 
rent ran with great force, then spread itself 
over a submerged swamp of cane, willow, 
and other small growth, amid the tops of 
which the heavy craft went crashing its 
way for fully a quarter of a mile before the 
arksmen could check it. 

It came to rest, finally, on a ridge 
thickly timbered with magnolia and live- 
oak trees, in the midst of which was a 
dense tangle of young bays and myrtle 


220 


SAM HOKOMOKE^* 


bushes and trumpet vines. Wedged securely 
between a live oak, whose great branches 
swept the after- deck, and a tall magnolia at 
the bow, like a pile at the end of a pier, 
the ark was as securely docked as if it had 
reached the end of its travels. 

It had all happened so suddenly that 
when Captain Royce came out of the cook’s 
galley, he was amazed to find the ark in a 
hammock a quarter of a mile back of the 
river. 

‘‘Well, Lewis,” drawled Shadwell Lin- 
coln, “ you’re a boss pilot. Reckon our 
voyage ends here. Looks as if we’d have 
to foot it the rest of the way.” 

Charlie Hoyt, Wistar Royce and Lewis 
Hoyt stood staring at the disaster that their 
negligence had wrought. 

“ Oh, shut up, can’t you ? ” said Moses. 
“ This ain’t any time for sarcasm. I guess 
Lewis did’t come in here on a pleasure 
junket.” 


221 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Lewis, surprised at having Moses siding 
with him, cast a grateful look at him. 
The extreme gravity of the situation, how- 
ever, was fully apparent to all. How to 
get so heavy a craft back into the river was 
a difficult problem. Once off the hammock, 
all hands, working together, might pole the 
ark back to the gap ; but the strength of a 
hundred men would hardly have sufficed to 
force it against the torrent that poured 
through the gap in the bank. 

MacAfee, who had made several voyages, 
thought that in four weeks the river would 
fall, and that perhaps by that time they 
might be able to haul back into the Miss- 
issippi. But Merrick and Kenton, and 
Obed Hargous, boatmen of experience, 
thought this unlikely. 

‘‘When we warp her out of this timber,” 
said Marion, “ she will be strained and 
sprung so that we can't keep her afloat. 
Probably, we'll have to unload and take her 


222 


“SAM HOKOMOKE” 

to pieces, and put her together again on 
the river/’ 

“ That will take months,” said Moses. 

“ One thing,” said Lewis. “The men 
in the skiff told me that the Spaniards have 
closed New Orleans. We couldn’t land 
our goods, even if we got there. There’s 
going to be a fight. The rivermen are 
drilling at Natchez, and troops are coming 
down from Kentucky and everywhere.” 

“ Is that true ?” asked Marion. 

“ I expect so,” said Lewis. “ I don’t 
see why they should make it up, do you?” 

“ I’ll take a skiff and go find out how 
things stand,” said Marion. His confidence 
for a moment had deserted him. He felt 
obliged to get away from the men who 
were looking to him to be told what to do 
next. The heavy shock of having their 
trip brought to so hopeless a termination 
almost unnerved him. He had hoped so 
much from this year’s voyage. 

223 


THE ARK OF 1803 


He launched his skiff at the edge of the 
hammock, Kenton and Moses shoving him 
off, and rowed away across the flooded savan- 
nah to the river bank. 

When he returned, he confirmed all 
that the men in the skiff had told Lewis. 
There was at present no outlet for the car- 
goes that were collecting below Natchez. 
The rivermen were preparing to fight. As 
to the ark, he had talked to a number of 
barge captains, and they had suggested a 
project for getting the boat back into the 
river, when it should have been warped off 
the hammock. 

A week was spent in taking off the 
horses, for whom a rude shelter was built 
from the cabin timbers of the ark. Some 
of the cargo was also unloaded. For 
another week part of the crew were busy 
in making harness from lines and hawsers, 
which they had on board for moorings and 
“ cordelling,” while others cut down tall, 
224 


‘‘SAM HOKOMOKE’’ 


high feathering pines to be used as rollers 
under the ark. The live-oak was also cut 
down and a way cleared for the re-launch- 
ing. 

They christened the hammock “ Ara- 
rat.” 

When they were ready to get the ark 
down into the swamp, the crews of two 
corn-laden barges from St. Louis came 
across to render assistance, bringing with 
them hawsers and pulley-blocks. 

The great broadhorn was finally floated 
on the submerged savannah, and it was 
comparatively easy for the men to pole 
back to the river gap, where the hardest of 
their task yet awaited the arksmen. Here 
the clumsily wrought harness came into 
play again. Claiborne and Lincoln had 
also contrived hames, roughly hewn out of 
green willow wood. 

A strong post was set in the river bank, 
on the south side of the gap. A section off 
225 


THE ARK OF 1803 


the trunk of a large hollow tree was fitted 
upon the post so as to revolve on it, for 
hawsers to reeve round. Their supply of 
line running short, three extra hawsers 
were bought from passing boats, and a 
double pulley-block constructed from sea- 
soned plank and two iron bolts. 

With such rude tackle, contrived 
wholly by the ingenuity of the pioneers, 
twelve of the horses were at length hitched 
to a long hawser, reeved through the 
pulley-block and running round the post, 
and the ark was hauled foot by foot up 
into the river. 

The St. Louis cofn barges had gone on, 
but other barges had been lying-by to 
render such assistance as was in their power, 
and they were on the point of giving a 
cheer for the ark when they noticed that 
all the labor spent upon her had been in 
vain. 

The ark was sinking. 

226 


CHAPTER XI 


THE HEAD 



HERE’S a bottom plank most 
out of her ! ” shouted 
Moses, coming on deck and 
looking wildly about for 
Marion. ‘‘She’s goin’ 
® down ! ” 


“ I don’t reckon she’ll 
sink,” said Kenton; “but 


she’ll be durn wet to sleep in.” 

“ What did it ? ” cried Lewis. 

“Sawyer, I guess, while she was cornin’ 
through the gap. It was an awful pull. 
Ain’t nothin’ left to show what done it, 
now,” said MacAfee. 

“There’s a bayou a little way below 
here that we can pole her into and lay 
her up,” said Marion. “Let go the haw- 
sers. Lewis, you and Lincoln watch the 
cargo and the horses. Get ashore, I don’t 


227 


THE ARK OF 1803 


believe she can sink. Let go the lines — 
all together — Claiborne, you and Kenton 
and Mose man the sweeps. Til look out 
forward. Watch the water, you fellows. 
If she settles any further, call out. Give 
us time to get off in the skiffs. I don’t 
think she’ll settle much farther.” 

The ark had sunk to her gunwales, and 
now floated like a raft. The whole crew 
were on deck, excepting the two who had 
been set ashore to watch the cargo and 
horses. With her dismantled cabin piled 
amidships, she* looked a wreck indeed, and 
excited much sympathy from the craft 
that passed her. About a mile below, the 
arksmen worked her into a flooded bayou, 
up which they were obliged to pole for a 
considerable distance before reaching shoal 
water. 

On this bayou the arksmen, directed by 
Marion, established a permanent camp. 
The cargo was brought over by small boat- 
228 


THE HEAD 


loads, and some was loaded and brought 
across by land on the horses, and stored in 
a shelter which was built for it. There 
were no means of re-shipping it by other 
barges, for all the craft on the river were 
loaded with their own freight ; and, besides, 
the port was still closed to the Americans. 

At this camp Marion overhauled the 
great flatboat as well as he could, without 
getting it out of the water, and so heavy 
had been the damage done by the snag and 
the strain of bringing the ark through the 
gap that, as Moses said, the cross-bottoming 
and closing of the seams was about as much 
work as building two new flatboats. 

Weeks passed, and the stifling malarial 
summer wore through. One after another 
the men sickened with a local fever, against 
which their familiar remedies seemed 
powerless. They recovered, but the great 
heat which made work during the middle 
of the day impossible, kept them prostrated. 

229 


THE ARK OF 1803 


The dews fell like rain every night, and 
made sleeping on the ground, as they were 
accustomed to doing in the northern woods, 
more dangerous than they knew. The air 
they breathed was full of heavy scents from 
blossoming bays and magnolias. 

Marion realized, too late, that he had 
been led by a forlorn hope into entering a 
cul de sac. He kept up the spirits of the 
men, however, and after nightfall led many 
an excursion up and down the bayou, spear- 
ing alligators by torchlight, from the skiffs. 
The men enjoyed this, for there are few 
more exciting sports, and it helped to keep 
the alligators at a distance from the camp, 
where they were too fond of coming at 
night to look for garbage around the cook- 
ing quarters, and terrify the horses and 
Tige. His life, poor fellow, was not a 
happy one. Jimmy had captured a baby 
alligator, about two feet long, and was try- 
ing to tame him in a little corral near the 
230 


THE HEAD 


camp. Natural sin was deeply rooted in 
his nature, however, and he and Tige, who 
could not leave such small fry to scoff at 
him unpunished, kept up a constant and 
deadly warfare ; and yet it ended in the 
little reptile’s drooping away from too 
much civilizing, until, like a flower out of 
water, he withered up, his skin grew 
cracked and dingy, and he died and was 
buried with melancholy rites. 

Marion also sent the men fishing a good 
deal, and they trolled all the way to the 
head of the bayou after green trout, or 
black bass, as they are called in the north. 

It was on one of these trips that the 
boys made a curious discovery which 
greatly excited the imagination of Moses, 
and led Jimmy to think of something 
which indirectly saved the fortunes of the 
crew, and, in all probability, Marion Royce’s 
life as well. 

The two were paddling up a branch of 
231 


THE ARK OF 1803 


the bayou, which they had never explored 
before. It was just sunrise, for they 
usually made these expeditions about day- 
break, and brought back the camp’s break- 
fast. The creek was very narrow — not 
more than ten feet across from one high bank 
to the other, but fully fifteen feet deep in 
most places, and fed by many little springs, 
which they could see purling at the bot- 
tom. The still water at the surface was so 
clear that they could see the clean sand and 
the tufts of grass in which the fish hid, 
motionless. After the months on the 
dirty Mississippi, and the black waters of 
the lower bayou, this little creek was a 
marvel of delight to the boys, and they 
paddled along, their blades brushing the 
banks as they went. 

‘‘ It’s the first perfectly clear water 
we’ve seen since we left home, isn’t it } ” 
said Mose. ‘‘ My, don’t it make you 
homesick ? ” 

232 


THE HEAD 


Jimmy shook his head. He had not 
been homesick. The ark had been his 
first real home. ‘‘ Look ! ” he cried. 

Moses looked, and saw, blocking the 
little creek ahead of them, the ribs of an 
ancient, many-oared galley. It rose, skele- 
ton-like, to the surface of the water, hung 
with tatters that looked like sea-weed and 
turned out to be rust-eaten chains. The 
boys paddled up to it and felt them over, 
dipping their arms in to the shoulder. 
They could see it as clearly as if it had 
been out of water. 

‘‘Curious, ain’t it?” said Jimmy. “Es- 
caped, most likely, from Corsairs, or 
Spaniards, or something. Wonder what 
became of the crew ? ” 

“ Let’s go ashore and look,” suggested 
Mose. 

There was a tiny strip of shelving 
beach, up which they drew the skiff, and 
then they wandered about the landing-place. 

233 


THE ARK OF 1803 


“ Here are some marks on these mag- 
nolias,’' said Moses, after prowling about 
for awhile. ‘‘Right opposite each other. 
A ship on this, and a square on the other. 
Do you suppose there’s a treasure hid 
between them ? ” 

Jimmy studied the deep scars in the 
smooth trunks attentively. “Uncle Amasa 
always said that pirates didn’t bury treasure,” 
he said. “ They spent it all. No ; I 
reckon that’s just a mark to show where 
the next fellows were to land, and what 
they’d find when they got here.” 

“ I bet there’s treasure,” said Moses, 
excitedly. “ Let’s come up here every 
morning, and dig until we’ve dug all round 
the landing, and see if we don’t find it 1 ” 

Jimmy looked at him with paternal 
indulgence. “ Don’t you get work enough 
on the ark to suit you?” he asked. “Come 
on into the woods a bit and see what they 
meant by these marks.” 

234 


THE HEAD 


They went up a pine-needle-covered 
slope and gained a tiny little cleared 
plateau, and saw an orderly line of live fig 
trees. If the boys had been southern born, 
this might have told them that they were 
looking at the place where people had 
lived, but they knew nothing about the 
habits of fig trees, and they did not even 
guess that the late crop of brown fruit 
which hung to the branches was good to 
eat. Experience with sundry prickly pears 
had made them cautious where they had at 
first been venturesome, and they left the figs 
alone. A few silvery boards strewed the 
cleared ground, and at a little distance a 
row of strange little wooden edifices, like 
the dog tents of soldiers, were falling into 
decay. Moses bent down and peered into 
one of them. 

Why, they’re graves ! ” he exclaimed, 
in an awed voice. I wonder why they 
were covered like this.” 


235 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘‘To keep animals from rooting up the 
dead, I reckon,” answered Jimmy, who 
was practical. “ The people from the boat 
must have come and lived here and waited 
for their friends a long time, and died of 
some fever, one by one, so that each fellow 
was decently buried. That’s all I can 
make of it, and I reckon that satisfies me. 
Don’t it you ? ” 

“No, it don’t,” said Moses, decidedly. 
“ I want to hunt for the treasure.” 

Jimmy looked at the younger boy 
thoughtfully, without answering. He saw 
that the vision of treasure had filled Moses’ 
imagination so that the terrible parallel 
that these lost graves and relics of a boat 
foreshadowed, for their own desolate plight 
farther down the bayou did not even occur 
to him. Nothing could be gained by 
pointing it out, moreover, so he kept his 
peace. He examined the ground carefully, 
and searched the bottom of the creek, 
236 


THE HEAD 


when they finally returned to their skiff; 
but the sands of many years had sifted back 
and forth, and he saw nothing. 

“ Mebby he got away,"’ he muttered, 
‘‘ when there wasn’t any one left to look 
after. Lord A’mighty, I hope so.” 

‘‘ Who got away ? What ye talking 
about?” asked Moses. 

‘‘ The last one, of course,” said Jimmy. 
‘‘We counted nine of those hen coops. 
Some fellow must have buried the last one, 
mustn’t he ? We did’nt find any traces 
of him anywhere, so I reckon when there 
wa’n’t anybody left to look after, he got 
away, and mebby lived to get somewhere. 
I hope so.” 

“ Then he probably took the treasure 
with him, if there was any ? ” asked Mose, 
who was still cherishing visions. 

Jimmy stared at him. “ Oh, dod rot 
you and your treasure,” he said, roughly. “ I 
mean — of cour-se, he took it. W ouldn’ t you ? ” 

m 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Sure — of course/’ said Mose. But 
this view of the case was a great blow to 
his fancies, and they rowed down to camp 
almost in silence. 

When they got back to the ark, Moses 
was full of their discovery, and told the 
men about the galley and the marks on the 
trees, and discussed the possibility of 
treasure. But Jimmy drew Marion aside 
to propose a very different idea. 

‘‘ Mack,” he said, abruptly, ‘‘ I want to 
take one of the skiffs and go to Natchez.” 

Marion lifted his head sharply. “ What 
for ? ” he asked. He was the color of clay, 
and staggered as he stood. “ What for ? ” 
he repeated, sharply. 

“ Tm afraid I’ll lose my head if I don’t 
go,” answered Jimmy. 

“ Your head, man ? What’s the matter 
with you ? Are you sick, too ? ” 

It’s the same as mine,” persisted 
Jimmy. The others can’t tell who shot 
238 


THE HEAD 


him, but they're all willing I should nego- 
tiate for the crowd, because he gave me 
the most trouble. I mean Big Harp — his 
head. I want to take it to Natchez, and 
give it over to the commandant at the fort 
and have it stuck up on the palisades, so 
that there won’t be so much outlawry along 
the river for a while. I got to studyin’ 
about it up the bayou, and I think it’s 
my duty. I oughtn’t to wait.” 

Was this Jimmy Claiborne? The boy 
who talked about his duty to other river- 
men ? Marion looked at him with a dawn- 
ing understanding of what the month among 
the outlaws, and the months on the ark, 
had been to the boy who had been con- 
demned at home. He knew nothing of the 
way the incident up the bayou — which had 
fired the younger boy with enthusiasm for 
treasure hunting — had brought home to 
this one what he owed to his fellows. And 
the young captain stood silent, staring out 

239 


THE ARK OF 1803 

of feverish eyes at the big fellow who faced 
him. 

“Jimmy,” said Marion, leaning back 
against a magnolia, “do you know that 
you’re the only man I can count on ? ” 

“ Me?” said Jimmy. 

“Yes, you. Kenton is around, and 
that’s about all. He’s discouraged. Mac- 
Afee’s discouraged. Merrick’s a pretty 
sick man. I’m discouraged. Oh, boy,” 
he broke off, “ if you knew what a load 

this expedition is to carry about on ” 

“ On a chill ? ” suggested Jimmy. 

“Yes, that’s it. On a chill. A band 
of those rufSans who are loafing around 
Natchez could come up here and wipe us 
out — the way we stand. There’s Charlie 
and Lewis Hoyt, and there’s Shadwell and 
Moses and you, and that’s about all.” 

He leaned against the magnolia and 
thrust his hands deep in his pockets and 
regarded Jimmy with a countenance so dis- 


240 


THE HEAD 


mal that Jimmy felt himself stricken with 
an icy foretaste of fear ; not fear for his life 
or limb, but that fear known as responsi- 
bility for others, which he now realized 
was the thing that most brave men carried 
about with them, even when they slept. 
Marion had carried it all through the voy- 
age. Was he laying it down ? 

“You’ll be all right by mid-day,” said 
Jimmy, with outward cheerfulness. “You’ll 
be all right. Mack. Don’t you go and 
worry. Everything’s doin’ all right. The 
men are gettin’ on pretty well. Corson 
has his chill, and then about noon he gets 
up and waters the horses. Every fellow is 
able to do something. They ain’t knocked 
out. Why, if any danger was to come 
along it would brace ’em right up.” 

Marion frowned. “ I want you to 
know how things are,” he said, a little 
impatiently. “ I don’t want you to think 
things are all right, and then some morn- 
241 


THE ARK OF 1803 


ing have the whole load fall on you with- 
out any warning, that’s all.” 

He pulled himself up with an effort. 
‘‘ If you go to Natchez, you’d better find 
out from somebody who’s had experience 
in this climate how they treat these fevers. 
You’d better take Lincoln with you, for 
you’ll probably have a fight on your hands. 
There’s a rough crowd there, and if you’re 
alone you’ll probably lose your ‘Big Harp.’ 
Find out everything you can about the 
chances of deposit at New Orleans. The 
commandant probably won’t tell you much, 
but what he does say will have truth in it; 
and all these rumors that we’ve been getting 
have nothing definite, except that we can’t 
deposit and ought to fight. The men 
along the river don’t know any more about 
the plans of the French than we do. I 
hope there’s no fight coming ; but if there 
is, God willing, we’ll take a hand in it.” 

“ You bet,” said Jimmy. He cleared 
242 


THE HEAD 

his throat, because what he had to say 
embarrassed him. ‘‘ Mack,” he began, “ I 
reckon you know Til stand by you ? If 
you’re going to be sick, don’t you go and 
worry. I’ll stand by the ark. I can put 
the thing through. You can trust me.” 

Marion smiled wearily. “You will be 
captain, Jimmy ? ” 

Jimmy flushed. His lip trembled. 
“You’re the captain of this expedition,” he 
answered in a voice that he tried hard to 
make steady, “ and captain you’re going to 
stay. Mack, whether ye’re up or on your 
back here in camp ; and I’ll see that your 
orders get carried out, that’s all. But don’t 
you worry — you hear me ? ” 

“ All right,” said Marion. “ I guess 
we understand each other.” 

“ i reckon we do,” said Jimmy. 

The young captain moved away to- 
wards the shelter of poles where Kenton 
was feeding the horses. He walked 

243 


THE ARK OF 1803 


unsteadily, and Jimmy saw him wipe his 
forehead with the back of his hand. A 
heavy weight settled on Jimmy’s heart. 
And this was the man Jimmy had sworn to 
be revenged upon, for forbidding him to 
join the crew ! At that moment, watching 
him going off to look after the welfare of 
the camp when he should have been in bed, 
Jimmy would have welcomed the chance 
of laying down his life for Marion Royce. 

If Marion should let sickness get hold 
of him so that he could not command the 
expedition, what would become of all of 
them ? In the crew there were but Marion 
and himself who had the gift of leadership. 
The others, efficient enough in other ways, 
all had disqualifications for commanders, 
and would quickly have brought the rest 
of the crew to riot and mutiny and chaos. 
The fact that Marion had been afraid of 
Jimmy’s influence at the outset, pointed to 
the influence which Jimmy had it in him 
244 


THE HEAD 


to wield, for either good or evil, and now 
Jimmy wondered that he had ever threat- 
ened to cast it against law and order. 

He continued to turn it all over and 
over in his mind through the process of 
helping get the breakfast of fish and pot 
porridge; and even after he and Shadwell 
had provisioned their skiff and started down 
the river towards Natchez, he continued to 
think of it. 

He did not communicate his thoughts 
to Lincoln. No one ever confided in 
Lincoln. He was too unsympathetic. 
With his drawling indolence, he scoffed at 
everything. Jimmy looked at him and 
wondered if he had ever felt a responsibility. 

‘‘Well,’’ said Shadwell at length, re- 
turning the look with one of languid 
tolerance, “ you’re most as talkative as your 
pa. What’s the matter ? ” 

“ Nothin’,” said Jimmy. 

“ Old Mack’s petering out,” observed 
245 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Shadwell. ‘‘ Fussed like an old granny 
about our getting off*. You’d think we 
were goin’ to New Orleans. Wanted to 
have Lewis come along, at the last minute, 
and leave them short-handed.” 

Jimmy pulled away at the oars. ‘‘ Good 
thing, too, if we could have him,” he said. 
“You just wait till it comes to pullin’ 
back ; you’ll think so, too.” 

Lincoln lay back in the stern and 
waved off the mosquitoes. A little later 
in the day the breeze would come up and 
blow them away for a time, but now they 
swam in the sunlight like singing clouds. 

“ Dod rot ’em,” said Lincoln. 

They shot out into the river and the 
current took Jimmy’s work away from 
him. 

Only two boats were floating down, but 
from the crews of these they received much 
disconcerting news. 

The climax of the long grievance had 
246 


THE HEAD 


come. The Spaniards could no longer 
arbitrarily keep the gate of the world closed 
to the frontiersmen. For the West an out- 
let was necessary at New Orleans. The 
flatboats must unload there and deposit their 
goods pending reshipment in sea-going 
vessels. Ten years before, when the 
Spaniards had denied this privilege, the 
West had talked of war, and a treaty had 
been made which gave the Americans the 
right to unload their goods. The term 
of the treaty had expired and the Spaniards 
had withdrawn this right of deposit. All 
was again chaos, rendered more formid- 
able by the great increase in the river 
traffic. What with their market closed and 
the talk of a French invasion, it was no 
wonder that the rivermen were ready and 
anxious to fight. 

As they neared Natchez they received 
more news. Bonaparte, with a navy behind 
him, was coming to colonize the Missis- 
247 


THE ARK OF 1803 


sippi Valley as a Grand French Empire of 
the West.” Meanwhile, the arksmen who 
ventured below Point Coupe — “ the Line of 
West Florida ” — as it was called, would 
probably be stopped by a Spanish battery, 
recently planted there by the governor. 

The flotilla at Natchez was evidence of 
the reality of this blockade. As Jimmy and 
Lincoln wound in and out among the fleet 
it seemed to them that the army which it 
represented, all the way down to the line, 
must overwhelm the Spanish troops if it 
came to fighting. In fact, the arksmen 
had little fear of the Spaniards. It was 
Bonaparte and his General Victor whom 
they feared. 

The Marietta brig was moored among 
barges and broadhorns, and Jimmy soon 
picked out a man he knew, who consented 
to watch their skiff while they went ashore. 
He expressed a good deal of curiosity as to 
their errand, but Jimmy deemed it unwise 
248 


THE HEAD 


to give any information, and made no 
mention of the plight in which they had 
left the rest of the crew and the ark. 

The sun was setting as they went up to 
the fort and applied for admittance. On 
the parade ground the flag was being 
lowered, and the recruits who were drilling 
had been formed to salute it. The notes 
of a bugle died away. The little gun, on 
the parapet overlooking the river, leaped 
forward with a loud report. 

‘‘You can’t seethe colonel,” said the 
sentry, in answer to Jimmy’s request. 
“ Come to-morrow morning, after guard 
mounting.” 

“ We must see him,” said Jimmy, look- 
ing towards the dispersing group about the 
flagstaff. “It’s important. We’ve got to 
get back up the river to-night.” 

The sentry looked at him stolidly, and 
returned his musket to his shoulder. 

Two figures came towards them : one, 
249 


THE ARK OF 1803 


whom the boys saw was the commandant ; 
the other a civilian, a slender young 
gentleman, dressed quietly in black. With- 
out further parley Jimmy started forward 
to waylay them. 

‘‘ Halt, you ! ’’ said the sentry. “ I tell 
you, you can’t see him.” 

I’ve got to see the commandant,” said 
Jimmy, loudly, with his eyes fixed on the 
nearing figures. I’ve brought the head 
of Big Harp, and I don’t want to leave the 
fort with it. Some of the cut-throats 
around here would be glad to break my 
head in exchange for it, if I take it away.” 

His words reached the commandant, as 
he had intended that they should, and he 
and his companion looked up. Both men 
appeared in rare good humor, which was, 
doubtless, the reason for the attention which 
the two arksmen received. 

‘‘You wish to see me?” the colonel 
asked. “You say you have Big Harp’s head?” 

250 


THE HEAD 


“Yes, sir.” 

“ Come this way.” He led the boys out 
of hearing of the sentry. “You will pardon 
me. Governor,” he added to the young 
gentleman with him, “but this is the fourth 
time that Big Harp's head has come to me 
within the year. If a patriot had as many 
heads to give for his country as an outlaw 
has to have offered for ransom, our enemies 
would never come to the end of them. 
What proof have you, young sir, and, in 
faith, who are you that you wear a scalp- 
lock with a civil tongue? Your garments 
bespeak the arksman from Kentucky, but 
your head looks as if it might be forfeit, 
like our friend's here.” 

“Aye, sir, it came near being,” said 
Jimmy, smiling; “and to him, at that. But 
since it had to be the one or the other. I'm 
glad to have had it as it is.” He began 
fumbling with the leather thong that tied 
the bag he carried. 


251 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘‘Oh, not so fast,” expostulated the 
colonel. “It’s an ill sight to sup on. Gov- 
ernor Claiborne, here, would be offering a 
ransom for the return of his appetite. Let 
it wait until to-morrow.” 

“ Governor Claiborne ? ” repeated Jimmy . 
He looked with astonishment on the young 
gentleman in black. 

The governor looked back at him in 
some amusement. “Well,” said the gover- 
nor, briskly, “what is it? I assure you there’s 
no ransom just at present on my head, that 
you should covet it.” 

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Jimmy, 
hastily. “I was surprised. My name is 
Claiborne.” 

“The devil it is!” said the governor. 
“You do me too much honor. And what’s 
the beginning of it? I didn’t know there 
were any head-hunters amongst our family. 
Where are you from?” 

“From Ohio,” said Jimmy. “We came 
252 


THE HEAD 


from Virginia. Uncle Amasa, my grandfa- 
ther, is descended from William Claiborne.” 

‘H see, cousins,” said the governor. 
“Well, cousin, my advice to you while you 
are in Natchez is that you go and make the 
acquaintance of the barber.” He put his 
hand into his pocket and brought out some 
silver pieces. 

Jimmy drew back, flushing haughtily. 
“We have to get back to our ark,” he said. 
“We have left some very sick men up a 
bayou just below the place where we were 
shipwrecked. One of my errands was to 
learn from some doctor who knows the 
fevers how to take care of our sick.” 

The bearing of the two older men 
changed at once. They asked questions of 
Jimmy and Lincoln, and as one question 
brought up another they eventually had the 
history of the voyage from the moment of 
Jimmy’s joining the crew, and Jimmy’s 
anger cooled. 


253 


THE ARK OF 1803 


‘‘One thing I brought that I thought 
might be sent on its way if you knew who 
it was meant for/’ he added, fishing in his 
pocket. “It’s a letter that the outlaws 
took from a despatch messenger that they 
killed. They thought it had something 
to say about money being sent by a brig 
from Marietta, and they had me read part 
of it. But when they found it was about 
militia, they were disappointed and let me 
keep the letter. Here it is.” 

The outer addressed sheet was missing, 
but the rest, including the sheet which 
Jimmy had used for his message, was all 
there, and as it was growing dark the colonel 
unfolded a little pocket lantern, and putting 
it together, stuck a candle in it, and read 
the letter carefully. Then he handed it 
to the governor, who also read it. They 
looked at each other. 

“I congratulate you,” said the colonel. 

“Thank you. But the purchase may 
254 


THE HEAD 


not go through.” The governor turned to 
Jimmy. ‘‘Have you read this letter, my 
son ? ” 

“They made me; — most of it, but as I 
did n’t know who it was from nor who it 
was to, I didn’t learn much.” 

“You did n’t recognize the signature of 
President Jefferson, nor my initials, with the 
dashes between them?” 

“Indeed, sir, but I’d never happened to 
hear of you at all,” said Jimmy, candidly, 
“until the colonel here introduced you, 
and I could not make out the signature. 
Are you the one that’s to be picked out to 
receive the territory from Napoleon Bona- 
parte if the President buys it, as the letter 
says he’s offered to? Faith, I’d like to see 
that, sir. I’d like to be able to tell Uncle 
Amasa that one of our folks had a hand in 
such a thing as that. He’d be right proud 
to hear it.” 

The governor looked in stupefaction at 

255 


THE ARK OF 1803 


the unmoved young arksman who spoke with 
so little deference, and yet from such an 
honest pride. Then he threw back his 
head and laughed boyishly, loud and long. 
The colonel, after glaring a moment, also 
threw his head back, and Jimmy, after look- 
ing doubtfully from one to the other, joined 
them. 

“Fll bear it in mind,’* the governor said. 
‘Hf there is anything to see, by Jupiter, you 
shall see it, and more thereafter. But now, 
colonel, how about the sick men up the 
bayou? They must be gotten out of there. 
Can’t we send up some men and put them 
aboard their ark and fetch them out where 
they’ll have a chance for life and limb?” 

‘‘We certainly will,” said the command- 
ant, and they were soon deep in ways and 
means. 

The head of Big Harp the colonel de- 
livered to an orderly whom he called to 
him, to be guarded until morning, when it 
256 


THE HEAD 


should be displayed on the Natchez trace, 
as a warning to all outlaws and a protection 
to the pioneers along the river. 

“The bounty will be paid to you,” he 
promised Jimmy, as he sent the two boys 
away in command of a barge-load of men 
and a surgeon. 

“ Fd rather not take it, sir,” said Jimmy. 
“It would be blood money. Spend it in 
making the river safer for the arksmen. 
Fm mighty grateful to you for arranging 
to get us out of the bayou with our cargo, 
and if we can land it at New Orleans and 
sell it and get home with all safe, we’ll 
count ourselves lucky enough.” 

“The river is open,” said the colonel. 
“You’ll have no trouble with the Spaniards. 
They got frightened when they heard about 
the Independent Army you arksmen were 
organizing, and have restored the right of 
deposit. But with all this rumor of a 
French invasion threatening, no one will 
257 


THE ARK OF 1803 


buy goods. Vm afraid we can't help you 
there, so you'd better accept the money, 
though your unwillingness does you credit. 
I'll be bound." 

“I'd rather not, sir," answered Jimmy, 
“and the others didn't have half as much 
trouble with him as I did. I'd rather you'd 
use it to protect the rivermen." 

The governor, who was still with them, 
clapped his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. 
“You’re one of us, all right," he said. “The 
colonel will keep it in trust for you, to buy 
land — or get an education at the University 
of Virginia, where the rest of the family 
have gotten their learning. Would that 
suit you?" 

“I've got plenty of land," said Jimmy, 
doubtfully, “and I expect I'd never come 
to be governor even if I went to the Uni- 
versity. I reckon it had better go into 
protection for the arksmen along the river. 
I'll be cornin' down occasionally myself, 
258 


THE HEAD 


and Fd like to feel that my money is out 
keepin’ watch along shore somewhere, or 
else helping to fit out explorers in the wil- 
derness, like uncle Amasa’s always pining 
to. I reckon that would suit me best.” 

“Well, well, we needn’t equip an ex- 
pedition with it now,” said the colonel. 
“Good luck to you, and au revoir^ 

“Goodbye,” said Jimmy, “and thank 
you.” 

“Goodbye, cousin! See you in New 
Orleans,” shouted the governor. 


259 


CHAPTER XII 

NEW ORLEANS 


LTHOUGH the command- 
ant had told Jimmy that 
the river was open, the 
ark had yet to hear 
from the Spanish in- 
tendant. 

Marion Royce was 
down with the fever when he was helped 
aboard and the voyage resumed, and Jimmy 
took his place, in a measure, and there was 
no demur. Even Shadwell Lincoln showed 
him a sarcastic deference since the interview 
with the governor. 

Night and a dense fog covered the river, 
when they reached the line of West Florida. 

Suddenly, as the ark floated downward, 
its headway was slowly arrested, and they 
heard the jangle of a bell ashore. The ark 
came to a standstill. 

260 



NEW ORLEANS 


Lewis, who was leaning over the port 
bow, heard the dull swish of the current 
against a cable, and saw that a raft of drift- 
wood had already collected against it. He 
dropped on his knees and started to crawl 
aft to report. 

Before he was half-way there, however, 
there was a dull red flash in the fog, ac- 
companied by a tremendous report, and a 
cannonball howled over the ark. So start- 
ling a salute might well have caused con- 
fusion, but the pioneer arksmen did not 
lack coolness in danger. The horses, in- 
deed, jumped and made some noise, but not 
a man spoke ; and Lewis, reaching Jimmy, 
whispered his news. 

He had hardly done so when a second 
red flash and report followed. They heard 
this ball skipping on the water ahead of 
them. Still another gun roared its hostile 
salutation, soon followed by a fourth report ; 
and but for the poor shooting of the Spanish 
261 


THE ARK OF 1803 


gunners, it must have gone hard with the ark. 
But, meanwhile, Jimmy was not idle. 
Swinging down from the port bow, he 
found that he could touch the cable with 
his foot. It was a strong line ; but glad 
to find that it was not a chain, as he had 
at first feared, he sent Moses for a large, 
sharp knife from the cook-room. Then, 
bidding Wistar and Lewis bear a hand at a 
line which he looped round his own body, 
he reached down, and after several efforts, 
cut the hawser. 

It parted with a splash, and immediately 
the ark floated on, silently as before. Four 
or five more shots were fired, but all went 
wide of the ark; the gunners appeared to 
think that the enemy was farther down- 
stream. 

After passing the Spanish battery, the 
ark floated on during the remainder of the 
night, and until eight or nine o’clock the 
following morning, when, the fog clearing 
262 


NEW ORLEANS 


away, they found themselves heading down 
a narrow passage between two islands. 
Being still apprehensive of capture, they 
tied up under cover of a wooded bank in 
this narrow arm of water. 

No one came off to them here, although 
they saw several boats in the channel out- 
side the islands ; and that night they went 
on again by moonlight, but had much 
difficulty at a succession of great eddies in 
the river. In one of these the ark floated 
round and round for an hour or more 
before they could row out of it. 

Very few boats were seen that day, and 
these few were mostly market-boats, plying 
to and fro between the city and the numer- 
ous large plantations on both banks. Moses 
and Lewis had never seen such fine places 
before. There were extensive gardens of 
vegetables and flowers, and the plantation 
houses looked palatial to their unaccus- 
tomed eyes. 


263 


THE ARK OF 1803 


What astonished them still more was 
that the river was so much higher than the 
fields of cane and cotton on each side of it. 
When floating near the bank they could 
look down on the gardens from the ark roof. 

Toward morning of the third night 
they arrived within a mile and a half of the 
city. As Jimmy had determined to go on 
in advance that day, to make inquiries as to 
the real condition of affairs, the ark was 
moored to what, in the dusk of the early 
morning, was believed to be a wild-wood 
bank. 

After tying up, Lewis and Moses jumped 
ashore to look about them. They had 
gone but a few steps, however, when they 
found themselves in a grove of thick trees, 
with yellow balls showing amidst the dark- 
green, glossy leaves. 

‘‘Oranges, aren’t they. Lew?” Moses 
exclaimed. 

“ Guess so,” said Lewis, doubtfully. 

264 


NEW ORLEANS 


“ Must be. Wonder if they are wild, or 
do they belong to somebody ? 

They had heard oranges described, but 
had never tasted one. A few steps away 
there was what appeared to be a green 
hedge, having numerous gaps in it; beyond 
were more of the thick, dark-green trees 
with the scattered yellow fruit. 

The two boys now advanced to one of 
the gaps in the hedge, but had scarcely 
peeped through when a little bareheaded 
lad and a tall, black-eyed girl stepped out 
from a covert. 

The girl said something to them, 
laughing heartily ; something in a rapid, 
tripping tongue, which they did not in the 
least understand. Moses afterward said that 
it sounded like, ‘‘ Bonesure-messr-may-voo- 
venny-arboner ! '* — which may have been, 
“ Good morning! You have called early!” 

Like most boys in pioneer days, Lewis 
and Moses were not very bashful. Seeing 
265 


THE ARK OF 1803 


that the girl was laughing, they laughed in 
turn, and pointed to the small yellow globes 
in the trees. Thereupon the little lad 
picked . up several oranges, and gave them 
each one, with a bow and flourish of his 
hand. Moses thumbed his as if it had been 
an apple, then essayed to take a big bite 
from it, with the result that the juice flew, 
some of it into his own eyes ! 

Noting this, the girl laughed heartily. 
Moses, winking hard, was inclined to make 
angry remarks; but the boy, approaching 
with grave politeness, showed the newcomer 
how to pull off the peel. He also peeled 
an orange for Lewis, and invited them to 
be seated on a bench near by. There was 
a house not far off, half-hidden by trees. 

A stout, dark-haired man appeared, with 
a huge yellow and white dog, that sniffed 
the strangers and then wagged his tail. The 
man drew near and said, ‘‘ Buenas dias ! ” and 
asked what appeared to be an abrupt question. 

266 


NEW ORLEANS 


Moses nodded at a venture, although 
he did not understand a word, but Lewis 
shook his head. The dark man looked 
perplexed and angry ; but the girl said some- 
thing about ‘‘ Norah,’’ to which the man 
replied — still to quote from Moses — Ah 
— see — Nor ah'' 

The girl ran away again, but soon 
returned with a tall, austere woman, whose 
auburn hair was turning gray. The woman 
glanced hard at the boys, and with a strong 
Irish accent said: 

‘‘ The sehor general wishes to know 
where you came from and what you are 
doing here, for sure.’’ 

Lewis replied that they had come down 
the river on an ark, and that they had seen 
the oranges on the trees. 

‘‘We did not come to steal them,” 
Moses added, honestly enough. “We will 
go right away if you say so.” 

The woman smiled broadly, then turned 
267 


THE ARK OF 1803 


and repeated what they said in Spanish. 
The small lad, meanwhile, was peeling 
more oranges for them. But the man 
cried out as if in much excitement, and the 
woman asked them gravely when they had 
come down the river. 

“ Last night,” replied Moses. 

‘‘We always float by night when there 
is a moon,” Lewis explained, to help out 
Moses* statement. 

“ Norah ” interpreted, and the man 
grew even more excited. 

The Irishwoman fell to laughing. 
“ But, sure, his honor wants to know how 
ye got by the fort.?** she said to the boys. 

“‘Fort.?* ** said Moses, inquiringly, and 
looking hard at Lewis. “‘Fort?*** he re- 
peated. “We didn*t see any fort** — which 
was literally true ; there was too much fog. 

But the man fairly jumped at this 
reply, and sputtered angrily. 

Little wonder, for this short, dark man 
268 





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NEW ORLEANS 


was the Spanish intendant of New Orleans, 
Senor Morales himself, the same who had 
ordered the embargo ! He had chanced to 
be spending the night at the up-river house 
of a French creole friend. Doctor Lecas- 
signe, whose children our youthful arksmen 
had found in the orange-orchard. That an 
ark had floated past his fortifications and 
never even seen them was not flattering to 
Senor Morales’ pride! 

Doctor Lecassigne, a lean, sallow man, 
who had now come from the house, sought 
to soothe the irritation of his distinguished 
guest. Norah, meanwhile, was asking the 
boys what they had brought in their ark 
and what they had seen on the way. 

‘‘ Sure I was once in Philadelphia 
mesilf,” she said. And a fine, brave 
gintlemon was Gin’ral George Washington ! 
Many’s the toime I’ve handed him his 
coffee. Ah, sure,” she added, ‘‘I’ve lived 
in ivery part of the world.” 

269 


THE ARK OF 1803 

The boys rather liked old Norah. 
Lewis told her of their nocturnal battle 
with the alligators ; and, not to be outdone, 
Moses threw in an account of his Indian 
“Gobbler,” and the great bones which they 
had brought for Doctor Buchat. 

“Doctor Buchat!” cried Norah. “Sure, 
he must be a frind of me master here,” and 
she spoke to Doctor Lecassigne, who be- 
came interested at once. 

He went to call Sehor Morales again, 
and immediately they both expressed a 
great curiosity to see the bones. The boys, 
therefore, led the way back to the river, 
where the ark lay moored. 

Jimmy had already set off along the 
levee for the city; but Shadwell Lincoln, 
who had as usual been left in charge, threw 
out a plank for them all to come onboard. 
He was a good deal disturbed, however, 
when Lewis whispered to him that the 
short, dark man was the hated intendant. 


270 


NEW ORLEANS 


Of the mastodon skeleton on the ark 
roof, there still remained seven or eight of 
the long ribs, the huge skull, femur bones, 
one long, curved tusk and many of the 
smaller bones. Both Doctor Lecassigne 
and General Morales examined them in 
astonishment at their enormous size. They 
sent back to the house for Norah to inter- 
pret, and asked a great many questions. The 
intendant seemed now to forget his anger, 
and assented good-humoredly when Doctor 
Lecassigne proposed that the ark should be 
allowed to remain there till he could send 
for Doctor Buchat, who seems to have been 
a friend of both. 

Doctor Lecassigne, who was a very ge- 
nial, kind-hearted man, went into the cabin 
to see how Marion Royce and the other 
sick men were coming on, and his favorable 
report, especially of the captain, gave the 
utmost relief to the crew. He then showed 
them a better place to moor their craft, in 
271 


THE ARK OF 1803 


a short canal which opened through the 
levee a little way below his house. A 
water-gate at the end of this little canal 
allowed a stream to flow from the level of 
the river down to a mill for grinding corn 
and sawing lumber. There were numbers 
of such mills along the levees, the mill- 
streams flowing out of the river instead of 
into it, presenting the odd spectacle of creeks 
flowing backward from their mouths till their 
waters were lost in the swamps at a distance. 

When Jimmy returned he was surprised 
and a little startled to learn that in his ab- 
sence they had had Senor Morales for a 
visitor. The intendant had already returned 
to the city in his barge; but Doctor Le- 
cassigne assured them that although the 
intendant was a somewhat choleric man 
and inclined to narrow political views, he 
would probably give them no farther 
trouble, particularly if they were to send 
him a present of a showy horse. 

272 


NEW ORLEANS 


This overture they concluded, rather re- 
luctantly, tp make; and since Lewis and 
Moses had seen and spoken with the gen- 
eral, it was judged best that they should 
take one of their handsomest animals to his 
house in the city that very afternoon. 

They set off, accordingly, leading a large 
bay horse — one of their very best. Mean- 
while Doctor Buchat had arrived to see 
his long-expected mammoth bones, which 
proved even bigger than he had been told. 
But his disappointment that the skeleton 
was not complete was keen, and he was 
willing to pay but four hundred francs for 
what Marion Royce had brought. 

The New Orleans of that day extended 
for about a mile along the river-front, and 
was surrounded on the back or land side 
by a ditch or moat, filled with water, and 
inside this ditch by a row of tall pickets, 
consisting of cypress logs driven into the 
earth close together. On this side, leading 

273 


THE ARK OF 1803 


out into the back country, were two gates 
with drawbridges; on the levee by the 
water there was another gate, both above 
and below the town. 

The people were chiefly French and 
negroes, with a small Spanish and American 
population, and the number of inhabitants 
is said to have been ten thousand. 

At each gate there was a battery of 
cannon, and along the river-front were a 
number of larger guns, deemed very heavy 
ordnance for the times. Negro slaves did 
the work of stevedores along the levee. 
Several hundreds of them were constantly 
to be seen at the latter place, and when not 
at work the rival gangs beguiled the time 
dancing, singing, and sometimes fighting 
pitched battles. It was all very novel to 
Moses and Lewis — the palisades, the can- 
non, the drawbridges, the long rows of 
houses and the gay shops. But, although 
strangers, they experienced little difficulty 
274 


NEW ORLEANS 


in finding the intendant’s house. For, on 
mentioning his name to a group of young 
darkies, the latter, mightily pleased at sight 
of the horse, led the way there of their own 
accord. 

Senor Morales was not at home, how- 
ever, and they had to content themselves 
with giving the horse in charge of his equer- 
ries, with Captain Royce’s compliments. 
Their errand accomplished, it would have 
been better if they had returned at once ; 
but they wished to see the town, and set 
off on a long tramp through the streets. 

Even in 1803, with a population of 
only ten thousand. New Orleans was a gay 
and picturesque little city. Lewis and 
Moses found so much to see that the shades 
of evening surprised them while they were 
still wandering along the streets. 

It was no more than a mile and a half 
along the levee to the ark, however. The 
boys continued on, peeping into the candle- 
275 


THE ARK OF 1803 


lit cabaretSy coffee-houses and verandas, 
where gaily attired people were talking, 
singing and playing. 

Presently, however, a serenOy or patrol, 
stopped them, on account of their pioneer 
dress, perhaps, and said a great deal which 
they did not in the least understand. His 
tone and manner were so censorious that 
Moses thought they had better turn back. 
Accordingly they hastened to the gate 
near Fort St. Louis, by which they had 
entered, but found it shut. A watch-fire 
burned in the street near it, and a soldier 
in uniform, with musket and bayonet, was 
walking up and down before it. 

As they drew near this sentry, he 
shouted: Centinela alerta!"' at the top of 

his lungs — the usual fifteen-minute cry of a 
Spanish soldier on guard duty. 

But the boys thought that he had 
shouted to them, and were startled by his 
vehemence. 


276 


NEW ORLEANS 


The soldier continued on his beat, but 
looked hard at them ; and not to provoke 
him into shouting like that again, the boys 
went back a little way to see what would 
happen next. 

Something happened immediately. From 
out a side street near the palisadoes they 
heard a little bell ringing, and saw a queer 
procession coming — two tonsured men in 
black robes, who bore a black banner and 
a kind of a tray; while behind them, at a 
rapid pace, trotted four or five attendants, 
each carrying a lantern. Bringing up the 
rear were twelve soldiers, having muskets 
and bayonets fixed. 

These, most likely, were Spanish priests, 
proceeding to a military execution. Moses 
and Lewis were apprehensive lest the soldiers 
might be looking for them, and promptly 
scudded to the cover of several long tiers of 
molasses hogsheads on the levee. 

The ominous procession passed, how- 
277 


THE ARK OF 1803 


ever; and, satisfied now that they were not 
objects of pursuit, Lewis and Moses came 
out from their hiding-place and followed. 
Walking rapidly, priests and soldiers pro- 
ceeded to the Plaza de Armas (now Jackson 
Square), passed the Cabildoy aduana and bar- 
racks, and went to the calabozo^ or prison, 
in the rear. 

Several hundred people had collected 
here, and there were also numbers of soldiers 
and three serenos with torches. Way was 
made for the strange procession. When it 
stopped before the prison door the by- 
standers drew back, and every one sank on 
his knees with bowed head — every one ex- 
cept our two youthful pioneers from the 
Ohio. They had no idea what it was all 
about, and simply stood still. 

Immediately attention was attracted to 
their irreverent attitude. One man whis- 
pered to them brusquely, and attempted to 
pull Moses down. Not understanding a 
278 


NEW ORLEANS 


word, and resenting having hands laid on 
him, Moses gave him a push. The stranger 
insisted. Moses pushed him headlong. 
Lewis, too, squared about to assist his com- 
panion. Thereupon two soldiers attempted 
to seize him. Lewis promptly clinched 
with the one nearest, and cross-locking his leg, 
threw him heavily to the ground. Moses, 
too, proved more than a match for the other. 

Our two young arksmen broke away 
and ran through the crowd, shoving the 
people right and left. But a sereno caught 
hold of Moses, and as he was unable to 
break loose again, they secured him, and 
with many threats and buffets, hustled him 
away to a circular wooden structure, hard 
by the calabozo. This was the “little 
calabozo,’’ which the creoles called the 
“calaboose,” answering to our lockup, or 
police-station. Moses was thrust in with- 
out ceremony, and found himself in very 
undesirable company. 

279 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Lewis meanwhile had broken through 
the crowd and started off at a rapid run. 
Several soldiers, serenos and others, chased 
him hotly, and shouted savage orders after 
him in Spanish, none of which he in the 
least comprehended. 

When it came to running, Lewis was 
quite at home ; they could not catch 
him. All along the water-front the chase 
continued, and Lewis was getting well away 
when he came to the palisadoes, by Fort 
St. Louis, where they projected into the 
river. 

Finding himself likely to be cornered 
here, he was about to double back on his 
pursuers when he saw a number of skiffs 
drawn up in a row. To shove one of them 
off was but the work of an instant. There 
was a paddle in it, and he got clear of the 
levee before the serenos could reach him. 
They hailed the sentry at the gate, however, 
and he, running up, touched off his gun. 

280 


NEW ORLEANS 


But by this time Lewis had paddled out 
past a five-oared galley which lay near the 
bank. Keeping outside this and several 
other craft that lay crowded along the levee, 
he escaped up-stream and returned to the ark. 

Captain Royce was disturbed when he 
learned that Moses had been made a pris- 
oner. He knew the ways of the Spanish 
authorities well enough to understand that 
nothing could be done for a captive until 
the following day, and that to obtain Moses’ 
release was a problem. It was suggested 
that the best method of procedure would 
be to go to the prefect, or alcalde^ the next 
day, with a substantial present. 

As it chanced, however, the present was 
not needed. Moses succeeded in solving 
the problem himself. He found himself in 
disagreeable company — ten dirty negroes, 
thieves and fighters, some of them intoxi- 
cated; a number of French sailors, a few 
Mexicans, and a pirate or two from below 
281 


THE ARK OF 1803 


the Belize. This motley crew received him 
with open arms and a shout of sinister wel- 
come. They passed him round, picked 
his pocket, and even tried to strip him of 
his leather jacket, moccasins and coonskin 
cap. 

But Moses had not been a fighter all his 
life without learning something of the sci- 
ence of self-defense ; and finding that he was 
being stripped, he hit out at his tormentors 
with such force that they stood away from 
him, objurgating him for un mauvais Kain- 
tock. Others stole upon him in the obscu- 
rity, and for an hour or so Moses was in 
his natural element. 

What light there was came from a lan- 
tern suspended from a peg in a wooden 
post at the center of the enclosure. This 
post apparently supported the roof. After 
a time Moses backed against it and stood 
there on the defensive. 

As the night advanced many of the 
282 


NEW ORLEANS 


prisoners laydown and slept; but the young 
arksman leaned against the post listening to 
all that went on. What would be done 
with him in the morning caused him 
anxiety. 

The lantern went out at last ; the 
candle was consumed ; and after a time he 
caught the twinkle of a star through a 
chink in the roof of the building. It was 
near the top of the post, and led the boy to 
think that the roof was not very thick or 
strong there. He was accustomed to climb- 
ing trees ; it occurred to him that he might 
break out, and he clasped the post with his 
arms and shinned ” up. 

He had twelve or fifteen feet to climb 
before his head bumped into the roof. It 
did not feel very solid, and pressing his 
head up against it, he began giving upward 
pushes, grasping the post hard and jumping 
up. One of the covering boards yielded, 
and reaching up with one hand, he pushed 
283 


THE ARK OF 1803 


it aside, got his head through the hole, 
and then climbed out on the roof. 

His operations had created a hubbub 
among his fellow prisoners below; clods 
and old bones flew about his legs, but he 
could hear no stir outside. So, sliding 
down to the eaves of the calaboose at the 
back — for he thought there was a sentry at 
the gate — he swung off, dropped to the 
ground, and decamped forthwith. 

He ran out toward the levee. A sereno, 
with his lantern, was walking to and fro ; 
but Moses easily kept away from him, and 
stealing along the encumbered levee up- 
stream, came to the palisadoes by the fort, 
as Lewis had done earlier in the night. 

The row of skiffs here attracted his 
attention, and deeming his own need great, 
he was not slow in appropriating one. The 
river current was so strong, however, that 
he was fully two hours paddling the skiff 
against it, up to the ark. Day was break- 
284 


NEW ORLEANS 


ing as he reached it. Thus ended the two 
boys’ first visit to the Crescent City in 1803. 
The skiffs were returned to their places 
that afternoon. 

The weather was hot; fevers prevailed, 
and Marion Royce had not recovered 
enough to dispose of his cargo. A great 
number of arks, flatboats and other up-river 
craft, came down to the city. The water- 
front of the ‘‘ American quarter ” for a 
mile was crowded with boats, and the town 
was so thronged with frontiersmen that the 
Spaniards had difficulty in maintaining even 
the semblance of law and order. 

It must be confessed that Sehor Morales’ 
reluctance to have American craft make 
New Orleans their market was not wholly 
unreasonable. The little city was in 
turmoil night and day. Roisterers were no 
sooner arrested and put in the little calabozo 
than a mob of their fellows collected and 
set them free. At last, to save themselves 
285 


THE ARK OF 1803 


further trouble, the boatmen pulled the 
little calaboose down. They were so 
numerous and aggressive that the Spanish 
dared not interfere with them in earnest, lest 
they should take full possession of the town. 

The wide-awake French population 
had grown very restless. These people had 
little fondness for the Spaniards, and ardently 
longed for the appearance of the French 
fleet. Equally they disliked the frontiers- 
men. “ Napoleon will make you hop very 
soon,” they said to the Americans in the 
creole “gombo,” or patois, ‘‘General 
Victor is already at sea. When he arrives 
you will all toe the mark.” 

Doctor Lacassigne and Doctor Buchat 
remained Marion Royce’s warm friends, 
however. The ark had not moved from 
its berth in the canal near the plantation 
house of the former. Here, too, they 
often saw Senor Morales, and once met the 
aged Governor Salcedo. 

286 


NEW ORLEANS 


News had already come that Spain had 
ceded West Florida and Louisiana to 
France. The Spaniards were merely await- 
ing the arrival of French officials and a 
garrison. The creoles had grand anticipa- 
tions of what New Orleans would be as the 
capital of the new French empire. 

In point of fact there had been another 
and more extraordinary change. President 
Jefferson had commissioned Livingstone 
and Monroe to buy New Orleans and a small 
strip of land at the mouth of the Mississippi. 
But, while the negotiations were under way 
in Paris, Napoleon changed his mind. Sud- 
denly, through Talleyrand, he offered the 
whole of Louisiana to the Americans, and 
the offer was finally accepted. The sale 
had already been made — April 30th, 1803. 

Even after the news of the sale arrived, 
the people would not credit it. ‘‘ Napoleon 
never gives up anything,” they said. ‘‘ His 
fleet will come at Christmas.” 

287 


THE ARK OF 1803 


But this was one of the cases where 
Napoleon gave up something. He dared 
not send a fleet to New Orleans, for the 
reason that England, with whom he was 
at war, had a stronger fleet than his in the 
West Indian waters. 

On November 30th the banner of 
Spain was lowered for the last time at the 
Cabildo, and the tricolor of France went 
up in its place. But the sight of it 
brought little joy to the creoles, for the 
rumor of the transfer of Louisiana to the 
United States was now confirmed. 

The French were taking possession 
merely to legalize the transfer. General 
Victor and the fleet were not coming. 

As the Spanish troops were now with- 
drawn, and the French representative had 
no troops with him to police the city, law- 
lessness would have held full sway if the 
arksmen and rivermen had not offered their 
services to M. Laussat, and, forming a vol- 
288 


NEW ORLEANS 


unteer company, patrolled the streets day 
and night, in armed bands. These were 
stirring times for the arksmen from Fish 
Creek. Marion was about again, and 
Jimmy was everywhere in evidence, jeal- 
ously guarding the city as if he were its 
sole custodian until the arrival of the 
American commissioners, Wilkinson and 
Claiborne. He knew, now, that the letter 
he had carried so long had held the first 
intimation to the governor that he would 
be chosen, in case the purchase was success- 
fully brought about, to receive it from 
France. To whom the letter was addressed, 
Jimmy never knew ; but it was evidently to 
some close personal friend of the President’s 
and the young Governor of Mississippi. 

City life had made some change in 
Jimmy’s appearance. He had taken the 
governor’s hint and visited the barber. His 
own heart was so jubilant that he marveled 
at the despair of the creoles. Women, and 
289 


THE ARK OF 1803 


even men, were seen weeping in the shops 
and doorways. To them this transfer was 
but one more mocking irony of fate. 

The time fixed for the entrance of the 
commissioners and the American troops was 
Tuesday, December 20 ; but the great event 
began for Jimmy the evening before, when, 
walking out by the Gate of France to the 
ark, he met Governor Claiborne and the 
French commissioner, M. Laussat, return- 
ing on horseback from a visit to one of the 
plantations. 

‘‘ By Jupiter, but it seems to me that I 
see my young cousin from up the Ohio,” 
exclaimed the governor, reining in his 
horse. ‘‘ Monsieur Laussat, permit me to 
present a young kinsman of mine from the 
West.” 

He turned to his companion, and at that 
moment a bullet whizzed past his head. 
Turning back quickly, he saw that Jimmy’s 
upflung hand had caught the wrist of a 
290 


NEW ORLEANS 


swarthy little creole. The pistol fell from 
the creole’s hand. 

“ You would, would you? ” said Jimmy, 
pinning him, now that he was unarmed, and 
taking him by the throat. “ What shall I 
do with him, sir ? He tried to shoot you! ” 

The governor looked down at the dark- 
skinned little partisan who had tried to kill 
him. ‘‘He seems to have no love for the 
idea of an American occupation,” he said. 
“ I hope the city isn’t full of such patriot- 
ism for France. Let him go, cousin. My 
friend,” he added to the creole, “ if you 
were as good an American as you are a 
Frenchman, I would like to have a thou- 
sand of you at my back. As it is, I will 
ask you to walk in front of us ; is it not so, 
M. Laussat ? ” 

To Jimmy he held out his hand. “You 
are always goodness itself,” he said. “ You 
will come to me to-morrow at the Cabildo ?” 

“ Thank you,” murmured Jimmy. But 
291 


THE ARK OF 1803 


he had no idea of doing so. He and th^ 
volunteer company would have their hands 
full in the Place d'Armes, preserving order. 

Next morning the American troops 
approached in order of battle, to be received 
by the Spanish troops at the city gates. 
They were escorted to the Cabildo, where 
the keys of the city were handed to Clai- 
borne, and the people were absolved by 
Laussat from allegiance to the French 
Consul. Commissioner Claiborne then 
welcomed them as citizens of the United 
States. The commissioners then passed out 
into one of the balconies and looked down 
on the cheering crowds that gazed up at 
them from the Place d’Armes. No other 
fanatic attempted to kill the representative 
of the new government, but Jimmy, among 
his volunteers, watched anxiously, as if the 
safety of the young man in the gallery 
depended upon him alone. 

Slowly the tricolor of France was 
292 


p 





IN ITS PLACE ROSE THE STARS AND STRIPES 


Page 2gs 




NEW ORLEANS 


lowered, and the Stars and Stripes raised 
until they met midway of the flagstaff and 
were saluted. Then the flag of the United 
States rose, to the accompaniment of a great 
cheer from thousands of boatmen and 
soldiers, and New Orleans was an American 
city for all future time. 

With the transfer came the hoped-for 
improvement. Within three weeks Captain 
Royce was able to dispose of nearly every- 
thing at fair rates, even to the old ark itself, 
in which they had come so far. Its sound 
oak planks went to repair the gun platforms 
and casemates at Fort St. Charles. And 
for little more than he received for these, 
Marion Royce had an opportunity to pur- 
chase a small ‘‘ keel ” boat of fifteen- tons 
burden for the homeward voyage. 

A difficulty now rose, however. The 
horse-gear for the paddle-wheels, which 
they had brought for the return trip up the 
river, was too heavy for the keel. It re- 
293 


THE ARK OF 1803 


quired six horses, walking round on a kind 
of gallery, to operate the transverse shaft to 
which the paddle-wheels were attached. 
The keel was too narrow for a six-horse 
‘‘ circuit.’’ 

Horse-boats were not uncommon on the 
Mississippi in those days ; but most, if not 
all, of these devices consisted of a large 
horizontal wheel, round which the horses 
walked, as sailors walk round a capstan, the 
horizontal wheel being connected by cog- 
gear to the shaft beneath, which carried 
the two paddle-wheels. 

Marion Royce now set his wits at work 
to devise something lighter and less cum- 
brous, adapted to his small keel. His two 
good friends. Doctor Lacassigne and Doctor 
Buchat, were much interested, and spent 
several days studying the problem with 
him. 

But a Yankee sea-captain, named Grover, 
who chanced to be in port with his Boston 
294 


NEW ORLEANS 


brig, had the honor of suggesting to them 
a horse-power of the treadmill type, such as 
is now so commonly used for thrashing 
grain and sawing wood, where the weight 
of the horses, climbing on ‘‘ lags,” propels 
the saw, or the “ separator.” 

At a ‘‘ smithy ” boat which had come 
down the river, our arksmen had such a 
horse-power made for them, and placed it 
low in the keel, amidships. The two 
paddle-wheels were attached to the topmost 
axle of the ‘‘ lags ” wheel, up the incline of 
which two horses walked abreast. 

A week or more was occupied in ma- 
king and adjusting the new gear, and there 
were many doubts as to its success ; but on 
trial it was found that two horses were able 
to propel this light keel-boat against the 
river current at the rate of about four miles 
an hour. It was necessary, however, to 
have two spare horses. Four of their 
horses were reserved for this purpose. 

295 


THE ARK OF 1803 


They still had the pet bear, which had 
come to them so unexpectedly. Captain 
Royce had supposed that they might fall in 
with its former owners at New Orleans. 

Moses, who still laid claim to the ani- 
mal, had hopes of trading it for a rifle. 
But Doctor Buchat had taken a fancy to 
the bear, and named him ‘‘ Napoleon,’’ and 
Captain Royce wished to give him to the 
genial Frenchman, who had repeatedly 
helped them. 

Moses demurred to this; and the doc- 
tor, perceiving how matters stood with the 
boy, oflFered him a pair of antique, silver- 
mounted dueling pistols for his pet — not 
a very suitable present for a boy, but the 
only thing he could give. 

The pistols were long-barreled old flint- 
locks, provided with “ hair ” triggers, and 
Moses was much elated. After a discus- 
sion, however, he reluctantly consented to 
give Lewis one of them ; and this burning 
296 


NEW ORLEANS 


question being at last settled, the two boys 
set off to take Napoleon to Doctor Buchat’s 
house, which was on Good-Children Street, 
beyond the French market. 

They confined the bear’s mouth in a 
strong muzzle and led him by his chain. 
Wistar Royce went along with them to 
lend a hand, in case of need, and to carry 
in a bag two vertebrae of the mastodon, 
which were overlooked in the hold of the 
ark when the rest of the skeleton was hauled 
to the doctor’s house. 

Captain Royce had that day given each 
arksman his share of the proceeds of the voy- 
age; and John Kenton, Clark MacAfee and 
Merrick also went along with the boys, bent 
on celebrating the occasion at the ‘‘Sure Enuf 
Hotel,” kept by a tremendously stout pioneer 
woman, known as “Old Ma’am Colby.” 
This was a place of common resort for flat- 
boatmen, and was in a locality called “The 
Swamp,” at the farther end of Girod Street. 

297 


THE ARK OF 1803 


But the three boys went on with their 
bear past the American quarter, and entered 
the city proper by the Tchoupitoulas 
gate. 

There chanced to be a festival in prog- 
ress, which, judging from the date, may 
have been ‘‘King’s day,” a fete celebrated 
by the negroes with songs and dances. 

A group of shouting youngsters set upon 
the boys, pelting them with little bags con- 
taining sugar and rice, also dust and snuff, 
that caused boisterous sneezing. The revelers 
began chanting an improvised song about 
les jeunes Kaintocks. This may have been 
good-natured chaff, but our young arksmen 
did not like it; no more did Napoleon, 
who was distressed by sneezing with a 
muzzle on his nose. 

They got away from this first group of 
roisterers, and hastened toward the doctor’s 
house ; but near the market they encountered 
a greater and much more formidable crowd, 
298 


NEW ORLEANS 


in fantastic dress, wearing masks and bear- 
ing grotesque effigies aloft on poles. 

To eyes unused to such parades, the 
spectacle was a startling one. The maskers 
wore all sorts of frightful head-gear — cocks' 
heads, with huge red combs and bills a 
foot long, lions' heads and tigers' heads, 
bulls' heads and dogs' heads, Indians, croco- 
diles, serpents with forked tongues; and 
all were crowing, growling, bellowing, 
barking, whooping and hissing, with an 
added chorus from scores of horns and 
conch-shells. The uproar, indeed, was 
incredible. In this fantastic mob our young 
friends found themselves suddenly engulfed, 
and became objects of most undesirable 
attention. 

Miraa los Kaintock malos ! " (Look at 
these Yankee rascals !) cried a tipsy Spanish 
sailor, and immediately an eddy of maskers 
circled round them, bawling forth a song 
then much in vogue : — 


299 


THE ARK OF 1803 

‘‘ ' Meric ain coquin. 

Bilk en nanquin, 

Voleur du pain, 

Chez Miche d' A quin!'' 

which, freely translated, signifies that the 
‘‘Americans’* are rogues who dress in 
homespun, steal bread from the bake-shop, 
and are all jail-birds ! This was not com- 
plimentary — if the boys had understood it. 

They cared less for abusive songs, how- 
ever, than for the horns that blared in their 
faces, and two “ Indians” who danced about 
them, brandishing tomahawks. When 
Lewis and Moses caught sight of these 
pseudo-savages they made ready for trouble. 


300 


CHAPTER XIII 


VIVE NAPOLEON ! ” 

[E boys had never seen 
anything like this before 
— such horrible heads and 
faces — or heard such a 
din. The tightly-muz- 
zled ‘‘ Napoleon ” rose 
on his haunches, rolling 
his eyes wildly round. 
Accustomed to play with 
the arksmen, he was not much afraid of 
anybody ; but now he attempted to bolt. 
The boys held him with difficulty. 

They still thought that it was probably 
‘‘fun.’' But when those two “redskins” 
rushed toward them with tomahawks they 
were alarmed, the whoops were so ugly, 
the hatchets looked so wicked ! Out came 
Moses’ old dueling pistol, which — like a 
301 



THE ARK OF 1803 


boy — he had taken with him under his 
deerskin smock. 

Lewis’ hands were so wound in the 
bear’s chain that he could not draw his ; but 
Wistar, with his heavy bag of mammoth 
back-bones, gave one “ Indian” a smash” 
over the head that felled him. 

Fortunately for Moses, trouble with the 
hair-trigger resulted in his discharging the 
pistol harmlessly into the ground. 

But the fracas now began in earnest, 
and it might have ended badly for our 
young Kaintocks had not a loud laugh been 
heard and a high-pitched but powerful 
voice bawled in a queer mixture of Spanish 
and French: Paz ! PaZy mes enfant s I 

PaZy mes petits ! — ‘‘Peace! Peace, my 
children! ” 

This timely outcry came from a ve- 
randa close at hand, where a stout old priest 
in a brown gown, and a tall, dark man, 
wearing a military cloak, stood watching 
302 


‘‘VIVE NAPOLEON! 


the revelers. Immediately the former came 
through the throng, stretching out his arms, 
pushing them all aside as if they were in 
very truth his “ children.” His big, kind 
face shone in the torchlight like a benevolent 
gargoyle, and his voice was as oil on angry 
waves. 

“ Paz ! Paz / ” he murmured, sooth- 
ingly, in that odd jumble of French and 
Andalusian. “ No sangre I Podos de bon 
coeur I ” 

With his hands he patted one after 
another, even Napoleon, who snuffed him 
thoughtfully through his muzzle. 

Beyond doubt this was kind old “ Pere 
Antoine y' who, for forty years, was so 
amiable and ubiquitous a figure in the New 
Orleans of those early days ; “ Pere Antoine 
cheriy whom, although he was a Spaniard 
by birth, the creoles loved to adoration ; the 
brown-gowned old Capuchin who married 
all the young couples, white, black and 

303 


THE ARK OF 1803 


yellow, and christened all their children as 
fast as they came into the world ; who 
heard and sympathized with them in all 
their troubles, griefs and sins. 

He was the unselfish, incorruptible 
guardian and lover of the city’s poor, who 
handled alms-money by the hundredweight, 
but lived in a little hut in the suburbs and 
slept on two bare boards ; who used to have 
a great brown leather bag at his girdle for 
a purse, often so full by mid-week of vol- 
untary silver and gold that, big as he was, 
he could hardly carry it, yet always quite 
empty — such was his charity — by Sunday 
evening ; the cher Daddy Antoine ” of the 
street gamins, who tagged after him for his 
blessing and lagniappe — and never failed to 
get both. 

The dark man in the military cloak, 
who laughed so heartily at the warlike 
attitude of the three youngsters in coonskin 
caps, was Senor Casa Calvo, the Spanish 

304 


VIVE NAPOLEON!’* 


commissioner, who continued to live in 
New Orleans after the transfer of the ter- 
ritory to the United States. 

Feeling sure, from his kindly face and 
the respect accorded him by the revelers, 
that they had made a friend worthy of con- 
fidence, the boys spoke to the priest of 
Doctor Buchat, and by signs gave him to 
understand that they were taking the bear 
to his house. Wistar also showed him the 
two huge vertebra. 

So greatly piqued was their curiosity, 
that both the priest and Sefior Calvo accom- 
panied the boys to Doctor Buchat’s house. 
So much animated talk ensued over the 
mammoth skeleton that it was not till late 
in the evening that the good doctor found 
quarters for Napoleon — so late, indeed, that 
the old naturalist kept his youthful visitors 
overnight and to breakfast on the following 
morning. 

This was the boys’ last trip to the city, 

305 


THE ARK OF 1803 


for that day Captain Royce had completed 
his preparations for the long voyage up the 
river, not forgetting numerous presents for 
the people at home. Wistar, Charlie Hoyt 
and Lewis, who had saved their profits 
from the venture, also bought similar gifts. 

Of Kenton, MacAfee and Corson less 
kindly mention can be made. Like many 
other arksmen of those times, they had 
squandered much of their money at saloons 
and gaming-places in “ The Swamp ’’ ; and 
becoming much dissatisfied, they determined 
to quit their more prosperous comrades, and 
go home on foot through the wilderness, by 
the ‘‘Natchez trail.” 

Putting together what they had left 
from their dissipations, they bought a horse 
and set off, Corson first riding for two 
hours, then hitching the horse beside the 
path, and going on afoot. When Kenton 
and MacAfee came up, MacAfee mounted 
and rode for two hours, then left the horse 
306 


“VIVE NAPOLEON!*’ 


hitched for Kenton, who was coming on 
behind. By the time Kenton had ridden 
two hours he usually overtook Corson, who 
then took his second turn. This was termed 
“whipsaw traveling,” and must have been 
hard for the poor horse. 

They expected to reach home in thirty- 
eight days, and long in advance of their 
former comrades on the “horse-boat.” 
Captain Royce sent a message home by 
them, and also a letter to Milly Ayer. 

He had previously sent word home 
by two Cincinnati boats ; neither of which, 
however, had been able to forward the 
message. Nor did the word or letter sent 
by Corson and his companions come to 
hand, for the three arksmen never reached 
the settlement on the Ohio ; what became 
of them is not known. Savages or outlaws 
may have murdered them ; or, owing to 
dissatisfaction, they may have gone to 
“ East Florida ” or the Carolinas to live. 


307 


THE ARK OF 1803 


The Milly Ayer^ as her youthful captain 
had chivalrously christened their new keel- 
boat, was not ready to leave New Orleans 
for the homeward voyage until January 
24th; and still another day was lost, wait- 
ing for a passenger who had offered Cap- 
tain Royce a hundred and fifty dollars to 
be taken to St. Louis. 

This passenger was none other than the 
waggish Lieutenant Charles Grimsby, who 
is supposed to have carried a despatch from 
General Wilkinson to Captain Amos Stod- 
dard, the first American governor of St. 
Louis. Captain Stoddard, however, did 
not assume the duties of office until the 
I oth of March following. 

The French settlers of St. Louis, indeed, 
were still in ignorance of the sale and trans- 
fer of the Mississippi Valley to the United 
States, and the horse-boat of our young 
arksmen was destined to bring them the 
first positive intelligence of this event. Like 
308 


‘‘VIVE NAPOLEON! 


the creoles at New Orleans, they were 
awaiting the arrival of a French army to 
take possession of the country in the mighty 
name of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

On the morning of the arksmen’s de- 
parture — January 25th— an old acquaint- 
ance returned in great haste and jumped 
aboard the boat, resolutely bent on rejoin- 
ing his former messmates. This was none 
other than Napoleon, the pet black bear, 
whom they had presented to Doctor 
Buchat. 

When first seen by Lewis, the bear was 
coming back at a clumsy gallop up the 
levee, dragging his chain and pursued by a 
hundred young darkies, who were hastening 
his flight with stones and clods. Instinct, 
or keen scent, had brought him to the 
Milly Ayer. He leaped aboard, whimpering 
from mingled fear and gladness at recogniz- 
ing his old friends of the ark. 

But they, truth to say, did not want him. 

309 


THE ARK OF 1803 

Word was at once sent to Doctor Buchat. 
It then transpired that the worthy savant ot 
Good-Children Street was not desirous of 
recovering him ; in fact, the doctor begged 
that Captain Royce would make some other 
disposition of the animal. He had turned 
cross in his new surroundings, and had 
been near devouring one of the doctor’s 
maid servants. 

Shadwell Lincoln suggested a rifle-ball 
as offering an easy way out of the difficulty, 
but Moses and Lewis would not hear of 
this. They still retained an affection for 
their former pet. 

Finally, since the bear was aboard and 
objected strenuously to going ashore. Lieu- 
tenant Grimsby proposed that he should 
take him to St. Louis as a present to the 
new governor; and with this destination in 
view, Napoleon began his return voyage up 
the Mississippi. 

At last the long voyage began. The 
310 


«VIVE NAPOLEON!’* 


horses were fresh, the gear worked well, 
and the little craft plowed her way gallantly 
up the river, making fairly good time for 
many days, with few accidents. 

Besides Lieutenant Grimsby, and Napo- 
leon, twelve still remained from the crew 
of seventeen, which gave four shifts of three 
men each for duty — the lookout, the steers- 
man, and the driver for the two horses. 

Wary in all matters that touched the 
safety of his boat. Captain Royce had pro- 
tected the horse-power on each side with 
thick planks, that no Indian or outlaw bullet 
might disable his team when at work. The 
stalls aft, where the resting animals stood, 
as also the cabin for the crew, were like- 
wise covered in. 

Twelve hours a day was the usual travel- 
ing time. They then tied up to the bank 
for the night, at some point chosen with 
an eye for defense and shelter. 

Commanded with such sagacity and 

311 


THE ARK OF 1803 


prudence, the Milly Ayer reached the con- 
fluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi on 
February 22nd, having lost but four days, 
which had been spent in fishing and hunting 
to replenish the food supply, and in forag- 
ing for the horses. 

Here for once Marion Royce seems to 
have departed from his usual rule of care- 
fully avoiding quarrels. He had never for- 
given the brutal assault upon Corson at 
‘‘Cairo.” Corson’s sightless eye had been 
a constant reminder of the indignity. 

The evening they reached the confluence 
of the rivers it was agreed to give Cairo a 
surprise. We are at liberty to surmise, how- 
ever, that the waggish Lieutenant Grimsby 
had something to do with this practical 
joke. His record afterward would seem to 
justify such a conjecture. 

During the small hours of the night, 
after the thin mists began to rise from the 
river and lowlands, the Milly Ayer^ using its 
312 


‘‘VIVE NAPOLEON!” 


sweeps instead of the horse-power, ap- 
proached where the big “broadhorn” — 
which still sheltered Cairo and its queer 
population — lay moored to the muddy bank. 
Charlie Hoyt then quietly boarded it from 
the skiff. 

At that hour every one appeared to be 
asleep. Stepping aboard cautiously, Hoyt 
first secured his skiff, then made one end of 
a hawser, which he had brought along, fast 
to the foot of a stanchion. This done, he 
crept along the shoreward rail, and with a 
large, sharp knife, severed the two old 
cables which held Cairo to the shore ; then 
decamped in the skiff as silently as he had 
come, paying out the hawser. 

This was some three hundred feet in 
length, and as soon as Hoyt got back to the 
keel he and his friends made the other end fast 
inboard, poled off from the bank, and then, 
heading down-stream again, set the horses at 
work with a free application of the whip. 

313 


THE ARK OF 1803 


The Ohio was then rising, and the old 
broadhorn was afloat at its moorings. Yield- 
ing slowly to the pull from the horse-boat, 
it floated out and away — as a coal barge is 
towed by a tug. 

In great but silent glee, our boatmen 
touched up their horses. They meant to 
tow Cairo down into the Mississippi, then 
cut adrift and let it go on a voyage of dis- 
covery. 

Before they had gone far, however, 
somebody waked up. First there were 
drowsy shouts astern, then louder ones and 
more of them, and then indeed pande- 
monium broke loose on the old craft. 
Lights glimmered in the misty darkness 
and candles were seen dodging to and fro. 
And now, hearing the clatter of the horse- 
power and the noise of the paddles from 
the keel, the Cairoese began hailing vigor- 
ously, to learn what was the matter. 

“Ho, the barge ! ” they cried. “You’ve 

314 


‘‘VIVE NAPOLEON r* 

run foul of us! You’ve carried us clean 
away 1 Avast thar 1 Heave-to 1 ” 

They thought that some river-craft had 
run into them, and did not for a consider- 
able time discover the hawser, but continued 
shouting for help to get back to their 
moorings. 

Nearly bursting with suppressed laugh- 
ter, our arksmen said nothing, but kept the 
horses hard at work. And with the strong 
current helping on, both craft were now 
going down-stream at a great rate. 

The Cairoese presently discovered the 
hawser, and divined the nature of the 
prank that was being played on them. 
Their hails for aid and information suddenly 
changed to threats and execrations not to 
be recorded here. 

Soon, too, a rifle flashed and a bullet 
sang past ; then another, and loads of buck- 
shot began to whistle and to pepper the 
keel. Our delighted arksmen were all 

315 


THE ARK OF 1803 


lying low, however, and had the horses 
well protected. They still held on, and 
kept the old broadhorn hurrying down the 
river at twelve-knot speed. 

But the denizens of Cairo were not to 
be long trifled with. Many of them had 
experience as river-men, and some were 
desperate characters. Instead of casting off 
the hawser, or cutting loose, numbers of 
them suddenly began hauling their end of 
it inboard, and despite the draft on it, soon 
shortened the distance between the two 
craft, with the evident design of boarding 
the horse-boat. 

But this was what Captain Royce and 
Shadwell Lincoln had been looking for, and 
before much progress had been made, the 
former quietly cut adrift himself, and veer- 
ing off, let Cairo go on its involuntary 
voyage down-stream. 

Rifles still continued to crack, and not 
a few bullets came aboard the Milly Ayer. 

316 


VIVE NAPOLEON!” 


Captain Royce got away from his queer 
“tow” without much difficulty, however, 
and when day dawned was ten miles on his 
way up the Mississippi, bound for St. Louis. 

It is said that Cairo did not get back to 
its former moorings for a week or more. 
And for years afterward river-men were 
wont to relate the story of the joke which 
“ Mack ” Royce played on the “ town.” 

The Milly Ayer was five days going from 
the confluence of the Ohio up to, St. Louis. 
But, at a little before noon on the 27th, it 
arrived in sight of the pretty clearing on 
the west bank of the Mississippi, where 
stood the hundred and eighty houses of 
squared logs which comprised the St. Louis 
of 1803. 

Pierre Laclede, a French trader, cleared 
a site and built the first houses here in 1764. 
In 1803 the houses of the French traders 
and principal citizens stood along Main 
Street, each at the center of what is now a 


317 


THE ARK OF 1803 


city block, surrounded by high palisades, or 
stone walls, for defensive purposes. Fruit 
and vegetable gardens were within these 
enclosures. There were two small taverns, 
a bakery, two smithies and two grist-mills. 
Many of the people were traders, and kept 
a stock of goods at their houses. 

The luxuries, and even the necessities, 
of life were excessively dear ; coffee was 
two dollars a pound, and sugar equally 
high-priced. A knowledge of this had led 
Captain Royce to lay in a stock of these 
staples, after consenting to take Lieutenant 
Grimsby as a passenger. And, as the event 
proved, he was able to clear a dollar a 
pound on four quintals of each. 

At the outset, however, a mad prank on 
the part of the lieutenant came near getting 
them in trouble. Knowing that the French 
at St. Louis cherished a vast admiration for 
Napoleon Bonaparte, and were expecting 
that he would shortly take possession of the 

318 




“NAPOLEON IS here! VIVE NAPOLEON!” 


Page 3ig 


‘‘VIVE NAPOLEON!’’ 


Mississippi Valley, Grimsby bethought him- 
self — since their pet bear was named 
Napoleon — to have some sport from the 
coincidence. He said nothing to Captain 
Royce, but persuaded Lewis and Moses to 
assist him, and told them what to shout as 
they drew in to the landing-place. 

In those days the arrival of a keel-boat 
from New Orleans was an event. Not 
more than ten came up in the course of a 
season. As soon as the Milly Ayer was 
sighted, nearly the whole population came 
running to the river bank, and were both 
astonished and immensely delighted to see 
Moses and Lewis waving the tricolor from 
the top of the deck-house and hear them 
shouting : 

Vive Napoleon!'^ Napoleon est id!'" 
(Napoleon is here!) Napoleon chez vous!” 

This was sufficiently bad French, but it 
was understood. And the effect ashore was 
tremendous I 


CHAPTER XIV 


CONCLUSION 

APOLEON has come! 
Napoleon est id! Vive 
Napoleon ! ” 

For a time the sim- 
ple French habitants 
were mute with aston- 
ishment. Then an answering shout rose : 
‘‘ Vive Napoleon ! Vive la France ! '' It was 
like putting a match to fireworks. An inde- 
scribable excitement ensued. The settlers 
crowded the river bank. Trappers fired their 
guns in the air. And now from all the more 
distant houses, from the fort and from the 
watch-tower, many others — traders, soldiers, 
and even the governor and his secretary — 
came hastening to the landing-place. 

Within five minutes more than a thou- 
sand people collected, all vastly astonished 
and overjoyed at the strange tidings. 

320 



CONCLUSION 


A babel of eager questions now burst 
forth. Was it true ? Where was the 
mighty Frenchman ? And who was worthy 
to entertain him ? All looked to Governor 
Delassus. With inward consternation the 
good governor bethought himself as to his 
somewhat scanty accommodations. In 
short, the prank was even more successful 
than the waggish Grimsby had anticipated. 
Intent on securing the full dramatic effect 
of his joke at the proper moment, the 
frivolous lieutenant had kept the bear out 
of sight, in the horse stalls, till the boat 
drew in to the bank. Then hauling him 
suddenly forth by his chain, he made him 
rear on his haunches in plain sight of all 
and shouted, ‘‘ Voila Napoleon ! ’’ 

Lewis and Moses, from the deck above, 
also cried, “ Here’s Napoleon ! ” and burst 
into shouts of laughter. 

A jest of this kind was quite in keeping 
with the rough humor of frontiersmen, 
321 


THE ARK OF 1803 


but with these French people it fell very 
flat. They neither understood nor appre- 
ciated it ; they were simply bewildered. 

‘‘ Un ours!'* (a bear !) they murmured, 
with glances of displeasure and many shrugs 
of disgust. 

‘‘ Un ours!” What did it all mean, and 
what in the world were these Americans 
laughing at? Where was the joke ? They 
failed to see anything laughable. “ Un 
ours ! ” 

No one laughed, and at last the lieu- 
tenant tried to explain his joke. ‘‘ Son notn 
est Napoleon !” said he, pointing to the bear. 
“That is his name! Napoleon! He has 
come to see you ! ’’ and Grimsby burst out 
in another laugh. 

Dismal silence continued to prevail 
ashore, except that several, still shrugging 
with comical little grimaces, muttered that 
Monsieur, V Americain, appeared to be un 
farceur — a joker ! 

322 


CONCLUSION 


“Ah, well,” cried Grimsby, disgusted 
in turn by their lack of humor, “you had 
better take a good look at him ! It is the 
only Napoleon that you will ever see come 
up the Mississippi! Your grand Napoleon 
has sold you out to the United States. 
Within ten days your new American gov- 
ernor will be here 1 ” 

At this juncture Capt. Meriwether 
Lewis, who had recently come there, made 
his way down to the bank, and hailing 
Captain Royce, whom he had previously 
met at Marietta, lent his aid to explain the 
matter to the governor and others. Captain 
Lewis was at this time completing his prep- 
arations for the famous Lewis and Clark 
expedition, which, under direction of Presi- 
dent Jefferson, set off from St. Louis on the 
I oth of May following. 

Lieutenant Grimsby had not seen the 
last of his joke, however. On setting off 
from the Milly Ayer the next morning, to 

323 


THE ARK OF 1803 


lead Napoleon to the governor’s house, at 
the northeast corner of Main and Walnut 
Streets, he was stoned by some young loaf- 
ers ; and in his efforts to catch one of them 
he lost hold of Napoleon. 

The bear, alarmed by the stones, gal- 
loped up the street and turned in at the 
open gate of one of the palisaded courtyards. 

Immediately a great outcry ensued in- 
side. Children and women screamed, and 
presently a gun was fired. Napoleon was 
creating a terrible commotion, and it was 
uncertain what damage to life or property 
he might be doing. But Grimsby, being 
overmatched by his assailants, was unable to 
go in pursuit of him. After a scuffle the 
lieutenant ran back to the river bank and 
called on Moses, Lewis and Wistar Royce 
to return with him. 

The four set off together at a run, and 
on reaching the scene of the skirmish, found 
that Grimsby’s assailants had beaten a re- 

324 


CONCLUSION 


treat, and a worse outcry than ever was 
issuing from within the courtyard of the 
house where the pet bear had taken refuge. 
But now the cries were those of pigs instead 
of human beings. The gate had swung to 
and latched, and the palisades were too 
high to scale. 

After some delay Grimsby and his 
friends forced the gate, — for the case seemed 
urgent, — and found an odd state of affairs 
prevailing within. In one corner of the 
yard was a sow with a large litter of young 
pigs. To these Napoleon was paying 
assiduous attentions. But for each one that 
he seized he was forced to fight a pitched 
battle with the sow, which, in defense of 
her young, attacked him with great intre- 
pidity, squealing and clacking her jaws in a 
most ferocious manner. With a stroke of 
his paw the bear was able to prostrate the 
sow, but immediately she was on her feet 
again, quite as fierce as before. 

3^5 


THE ARK OF 1803 


There was such an uproar that the 
rescue party did not at first notice what had 
become of the people of the house till they 
heard them calling out from the roof. 

The man, a French trader, had a gun, 
the flint-lock of which he was endeavoring 
to put in order. He had fired once, but 
had failed to do the bear much injury. 
The trader’s wife, children and two or 
three female servants were behind him on 
the roof, and they all besought the arksmen 
to drive out the bear and save their poor 
pigs. 

Grimsby and Moses laid hold of the 
chain and tried to pull Napoleon away, but 
he had become excited in the affray with 
the sow. He was bleeding from several 
slight wounds ; and, moreover, had had a 
taste of young pork. He turned upon his 
masters so savagely that they were obliged 
to let him go, but they finally succeeded in 
driving him out of the enclosure. 

326 


CONCLUSION 


Attracted by the clamor, a considerable 
crowd had collected in the street outside 
the gate, and when the bear rushed forth 
another hubbub rose. Napoleon ran up 
Market Street, however, which was then a 
mere country lane, and escaped through the 
broken gate of the stockade which enclosed 
the hamlet. 

Outside the stockade there were clear- 
ings, fifty or sixty acres in extent, where 
the people raised wheat, corn and vege- 
tables. It was while cultivating these crops 
a few years before that the settlers were 
surprised by the savages from the British 
post at Michilimackinac during the Amer- 
ican Revolution. Across this cleared tract 
Napoleon was now escaping. On reaching 
the gateway of the stockade, Lewis caught 
sight of his shaggy black coat as he bounded 
over the charred logs that still encumbered 
the fields. 

They all gave chase after him, for 

327 


THE ARK OF 1803 


Grimsby was very desirous of presenting 
him to Major Stoddard; but the bear ran 
fast and reached the woods. For the time 
being, at least, he appeared to have had 
more than enough of civilization and its 
dubious luxuries — including young pigs 
with savage mothers. Lewis and Moses 
called after him in most endearing accents, 
but he still ran on. They could hear his 
long chain jingle as it dragged over logs ; 
and now and then they sighted him, but 
could not overtake him. 

Thinking, however, that he would stop 
after awhile, they followed on for several 
miles, through what was then a virgin 
forest of chestnut, walnut and sycamore. 

At last they crossed a creek and saw the 
bear ascending a hill. Near the top of this 
hill they came upon him, hung up hard 
and fast by his chain, the ring in the end 
of which had caught between two fallen 
tree trunks. He was panting hard, and 
328 


CONCLUSION 

appeared to have had all the exercise he 
desired. He licked Moses’ hand when the 
boy patted his head, and went back with 
them in a very docile frame of mind to the 
governor’s house. 

The arksmen were far too desirous of 
reaching home to dally longer than was 
necessary in St. Louis. Having landed 
his passenger according to agreement, and 
disposed of his venture in coffee and sugar. 
Captain Royce lost no time in returning 
down the river. He was not sorry to 
part company with the waggish Grimsby, 
whose propensity for practical joking ren- 
dered companionship with him both em- 
barrassing and unsafe. 

Having now the river current in aid of 
the paddle-gear, they reached the confluence 
with the Ohio in a little more than two 
days. After what had taken place there a 
week or more before, they judged it prudent 
to go past “ Cairo ” during the small hours 

329 


THE ARK OF 1803 

of the night. Beyond doubt this was a 
wise precaution. It was learned subse- 
quently that the population of the old 
^^broadhorn” was watching the river for 
them. Practical jokes have an unpleasant 
habit of coming home to roost. 

On March 19 th they ‘‘cordelled” up 
Letart’s “ Falls,” the scene of their en- 
counter with the Shawnees, and a little be- 
fore sunset, three days later — just a year and 
two days from the time when they had 
started — the Milly Ayer rounded the bend 
below Fish Creek, and came in sight of 
home. 

As the familiar hillocks and clearings 
came into view, Lewis, Moses and Wistar 
waxed wild with excitement and delight. 
They danced and whooped ; Moses actually 
stood on his head, and Marion Royce felt 
his own heart beating hard and fast. But 
he was pondering gravely on all that might 
have happened during their long absence, 
330 


CONCLUSION 


and on the evil tidings that he must bear to 
the mother of Louis Gist and the wife of 
John Cutler. 

Not one word from home had reached 
them in all that time ; but he supposed 
that Corson and MacAfee had arrived long 
ago, bearing his message that the horse-boat 
was on her way. 

In point of fact, however, no news had 
come to the home people since that black 
day in early June, when Gist had found his 
way back and reported the capture of the 
ark by the Indians. 

Gist’s account had been doubted by 
many, and for a long time those anxious 
little homesteads had waited and hoped 
that further tidings would come. But when 
September and October passed and winter 
drew on, even the most sanguine grew 
hopeless ; and how disconsolately the spring 
opened ! For, not only had these pioneer 
families lost the fruits of two years’ hard 


331 


THE ARK OF 1803 


labor, but also their most efficient young 
men. There seemed nothing left them 
with which to begin another year; not even 
heart and courage to labor on. 

In the Royce and Hoyt families there 
was mourning for both their sons ; and at 
the Ayer farmhouse grief more silent, per- 
haps, but even more poignant, was felt. 
Milly was among those who had hoped 
bravely on till midwinter. She and Molly 
Royce were the last to give up faith that 
Marion, Lewis and Moses had somehow' 
escaped and would yet come back. 

But when March passed and no tidings 
came, despair fell on. them, too, and the 
despair of such hopeful young hearts is sad 
to witness. The little settlement was in 
mourning none the less sincere that there 
was no black crape or sable plume for out- 
ward symbols of it. 

Yet one emblem of their grief these 
sad-faced women and girls were able to 
332 


CONCLUSION 


contrive. They wove and fashioned little 
shoulder capes from homespun linen, and 
dyed them black with an “ink” made by 
boiling the twigs of the swamp-maple. 
Nine of these little black capes were worn that 
spring, and one of those pathetic little tokens 
of pioneer sorrow is still in existence, the 
property of a lineal descendant of Milly Ayer. 

That afternoon Milly and Molly chanced 
to be coming from Mrs. Merrick's cabin, 
when, as they climbed the hillside, where a 
vista of the Ohio opened to view, Molly 
saw the “ keel ” rounding the bend. 

“ There's a boat coming, Milly,'' she 
said, soberly enough ; but Milly, thinking 
of one that would never return, had hardly 
the heart to look. 

Boats on the river were always objects 
of interest then, however, and Molly pres- 
ently turned. 

“It's a keel,” she said. “It must be a 
horse-boat, too, it comes so fast.” 


333 


THE ARK OF 1803 


A Pittsburgh keel, it is likely,” Milly 
replied, apathetically; ‘‘or, maybe. Marietta.” 

“Perhaps it is from New Orleans,” said 
Molly. “ Oh, I wish we could hail them 
and ask if they had ever heard anything.” 

They had no real intention of doing so 
bold a thing, yet for some moments they 
stood watching the approaching craft, 
which, to avoid the more rapid current, had 
been keeping well over to the Virginia 
shore. 

“ It’s going to cross ! ” Molly exclaimed, 
at last. “ It’s heading this way ! What a 
noise the paddles make ! ” — for the wind 
was southerly. 

Sturdily the little keel stemmed the 
river current, making for the creek mouth. 

“O Milly, I do believe they are going 
to call at our landing!” the younger girl 
now exclaimed in excitement. “Yes, they 
are coming right into our creek 1 Hear the 
horses’ feet clatter ! ” 


334 



“THEY ARE GOING TO CALL AT OUR LANDING!" 


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CONCLUSION 


Perhaps they want to buy something 
— eggs, or milk, or potatoes,” said Milly. 
‘‘We have a few eggs. We will go out on 
the bluff above the landing, and answer if 
they hail.” 

There was a little belt of hickory and 
oak to pass through, and by the time the 
two girls had come out on the bluff the 
keel of our returning arksmen had entered 
the mouth of the creek, but was passing 
behind the thick, tall fringe of sycamores 
that bordered the stream. 

A moment later it emerged into the 
cleared space about the jetty, and there 
stood Moses on top of the cabin roof. He 
had discovered them upon the bluff, and was 
swinging his cap, shouting: 

“There’s Milly ! There’s Molly ! ” 

Thereupon Marion and Wistar, who 
were forward with pike-poles, to fend off, and 
Lewis, who was at the sweep aft, all looked up 
the bank and joined in Moses’ joyous shouts. 
335 


THE ARK OF 1803 


So sudden was the transition from sor- 
row to joy, it is not strange that instead of 
rushing down to the landing, the two girls, 
after a feeble effort to answer, sat down, 
quite overcome, and burst into tears. When 
Captain Royce and the others jumped ashore 
and ran up to where they were, Milly and 
Molly were found smiling, indeed, but with 
such wet cheeks that, noting the little black 
capes, Marion cried, “ O Milly, who is 
dead ? ” 

And it is said that Milly's faint little 
reply was, “ Nobody, Marion — except — 
except — you ! ’’ 

We may be sure that these brave youths 
were not long convincing the girls that they 
were still very much alive; and, not only 
Milly and Molly, but all the rest of the little 
community. For just then Mrs. Ayer, who 
had seen the keel heading in, came hasten- 
ing to the landing. The Hoyt boys* father 
also made his appearance, and immediately 

336 


CONCLUSION 


the glorious news was shouted from house 
to house. 

The last to hear of the safe return of the 
arksmen was Uncle Amasa. He had broken 
in the long months of grieving for the dis- 
appearance of Jimmy, whom he believed 
dead, and he came in slowly, with as much 
heaviness in his heart as he had of sympathy 
for those whom he was coming to congrat- 
ulate. But when he neared the group about 
the landing he saw a figure that made his 
heart quicken. Jimmy saw him at the 
same moment. 

“ I — r ve seen pa,” Jimmy said in strange, 
inconsequent sort of haste. “ He sent his 
love to you.” 

Old Uncle Amasa laid trembling hands 
on him, and wordlessly drew him close. 

Jimmy looked about at the familiar 
place, scarred with the fire where the shed 
had stood. ‘‘The man that set it is killed,” 
he said. “He did it to spite you, grand- 
337 


THE ARK OF 1803 


father, for an old, old grudge. He broached 
the barrels and then when he couldn’t 
drink any more he set fire to the shed and 
rode away, and I found him.” He looked 
back at the old man. — Governor Clai- 
borne of Mississippi sent his regards to you. 
He says we’re cousins. He was right at the 
head of everything. You would have liked 
that. I tell you, if you’d been at New 
Orleans, you’d have been proud of the 
family.” 

Marion came up and shook Uncle 
Amasa’s hand. ‘‘You would have been 
proud right along,” he said, eagerly “ It 
was Jimmy that pulled us through.” 

Uncle Amasa chuckled and patted Jim- 
my’s shoulder. “ I kinder thought it would 
do Jimmy right much good to go out into 
the world,” he said. 

Master Hempstead now came up and 
shook Jimmy’s hand. “ When we last met 
did not Sir Balin smite Sir Lanceor until the 
338 


CONCLUSION 


blood flowed over his hawberk ? Zounds, 
son, I am glad that you’ve found that some- 
body else was the incendiary.” 

‘‘ I owe you an apology, sir,” said Jimmy 
with great respect. ‘‘ I was too hasty.” 

It’s a grand thing to be hasty,” mur- 
mured Uncle Amasa, rubbing the bald side 
of his head where the Indians had scalped 
him. 

“ I guess the governor thought so when 
Jimmy saved him from the assassin’s bullet,” 
laughed Marion. ‘‘ It seems to be all a 
question of being hasty in the right place. 
Don’t you think so, Jimmy ?” 

“ I guess that’s it,” said Jimmy, happily. 

Then began such a jubilee as this small 
settlement had never known before. ‘‘ Brush 
College ” had another holiday, and Master 
Hempstead became vastly exhilarated — 
wholly from joy, let us hope. No one, it is 
said, slept at all that night, — unless a few 
infants, — and dawn surprised the entire 
339 


THE ARK OF 1803 


population at the capacious Royce cabin, 
still listening to the story of that memorable 
voyage. 

Otherwise, too, the arksmen had great 
news to tell. New Orleans was no longer 
a Spanish possession, but an American city, 
where Western keels, arks and barges could 
go without let or hindrance; and the Mis- 
sissippi was a free river from St. Louis to 
the Gulf. 

It was then — along toward morning — 
that Master Hempstead waxed wondrously 
eloquent, and made a great speech, still re- 
membered, in which, with prophetic vision, 
he predicted and portrayed the future glories 
of the middle West. 

So much remains to relate that I bring 
the narrative to a close most reluctantly. 
The annals of the Royce and Ayer families 
have it that Milly and Marion made the 
most remarkable wedding tour of those 
times, journeying even to Philadelphia and 

340 


CONCLUSION 


to the new capital city of Washington, 
where they attended one of President Jeffer- 
son’s very democratic receptions. But those 
things belong to the annals of other years. 
Our task was but to tell the story of the 
Ark of 1803. 


THE END 






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